Variational Effective Index Analysis of Organic/Polymer Rib Optical Waveguide

Organic/Polymer rib optical waveguide is an important component in polymeric integrated optoelectronic devices as electro-optic modulators. By employing effective index method to calculate the transverse refractive index distribution and effective index of polymer rib waveguide, the optical field distribution in each region is expressed as piecewise functions approximately. Based on the scalar wave equation that governs the guided modes, the variational parameter is determined by variational method for obtaining accuracy transverse optical field distribution. The dispersion characteristics and transverse field distributions of the fundamental and higher order modes are analyzed for polymer rib multimode waveguide. An algorithm is implemented to investigate the effect of the structure parameters and dimensions on the dispersion characteristics, and the transverse optical intensity distributions of the fundamental and higher order modes for TM, TE modes are calculated. The approach has advantages such as high precision, small calculation complexity and high efficiency, which will provide theoretical reference and optimization method for the fabrication of polymeric electro-optic devices.