Elliptical fibre dielectric waveguides: a transverse transmission line analysis

Abstract

The authors present a new method for determining the optical properties of arbitrary refractive index elliptical core fibres. The method applies the elliptic cylindrical coordinate system to Maxwell's equations and appropriately, using Fourier Transforms, operated on an elliptical core optical fibre waveguide, derives a flexible algorithm, which can be used to determine the optical properties of elliptical fibre waveguides. By dividing the fibre into a series of uniform consecutive thin dielectric layers transversely across the elliptical cross section with suitable transforming functions representing voltage and current themselves based on the electromagnetic field components, leads to transverse transmission line equations. The resonance frequencies of the cascaded matrices determine the mode propagation constants. The analysis leads to a numerical algorithm for calculating the exact modes of propagation constants. The method is analytically exact and computationally accurate, leading to algorithmic implementation, without making use of Mathieu functions which are solutions for step index waveguide. The advantage of this work is also the fact that it can be applied to arbitrary refractive index profiles. They present results of modal b ¯ − V diagrams for various fibre ellipticities and also apply this method to determine the birefringence of graded index profile fibres and mode cut-off frequencies.