Dielectric waveguides of arbitrary cross sectional shape

Numerical guided mode solutions of arbitrary cross sectional shaped waveguides are obtained using a finite difference (FD) technique. The standard FD scheme is appropriately modified to capture all discontinuities, due to the change of the refractive index, across the waveguides’ interfaces taking into account the shape of each interface at the same time. The method is applied to the vector Helmholtz equation formulated to describe the electric or magnetic fields in the waveguide (one field is retrieved from the other through Maxwell’s equations). Computational cost is kept to a minimum by exploiting sparse matrix algebra. The waveguides under study have arbitrary cross sectional shape and arbitrary refractive index profile.