Aiming at realizing a semiconductor integrated optical element comprising a single semiconductor substrate, and first and second optical waveguides differed in the equivalent refractive index from each other on the semiconductor substrate, allowing light signal to propagate from the first optical waveguide to the second optical waveguide, in which the first and second optical waveguides are provided side-by-side on the semiconductor substrate to form a directional coupler allowing optical coupling between the first and second optical waveguides, and a first-guiding-mode optical signal in the first optical waveguide is output after being converted into a second-guiding-mode optical signal in second optical waveguide, which makes possible to suppress generation of reflection loss and emission loss in optical coupling, and obtain extremely desirable optical coupling characteristics, without causing reflection of optical signal, between different types of optical waveguides differed from each other in the equivalent refractive index.