Mode Calculation of Optical Waveguides

The speaker will present a second kind integral equation (SKIE) formulation for calculating the electromagnetic modes of optical waveguides, where the unknowns are only on material interfaces. The resulting numerical algorithm can handle optical waveguides with a large number of inclusions of arbitrary irregular cross section. It is capable of finding complex modes for optical fibers and waveguides including photonic crystal fibers, dielectric fibers and waveguides. Most importantly, the formulation is well conditioned even in the case of non smooth geometries. The speaker will also combine the SKIE formulation with the Sommerfeld representation to study the effect of finite cladding thickness on modal confinement loss of photonic waveguides. This method is efficient and highly accurate, which provides the photonics industry a reliable tool for the design of more compact and efficient photonic devices. The speaker will illustrate and validate the performance of his method through extensive numerical studies and by comparison with semi-analytical results and previously published results.

This is a joint work with Dr. Jun Lai at Zhejiang University.