Guided modes and loss in a plasma-filled Bragg waveguide

Abstract

The dispersion and radiation loss of propagating modes in a plasma-filled Bragg waveguide are investigated. The Bragg waveguide at a center frequency of 10 GHz is modeled with the transfer-matrix method, which has been used to analyze optical Bragg fibers. We calculate the dispersion and radiation loss of the TE01, TM01, and HE11 modes and show how they vary as a function of plasma density. As the plasma density inside the waveguide increases, the cutoff frequency of each mode increases. An increase in plasma density increases the radiation loss in the TE01 mode while it decreases the radiation loss in the TM01 mode; the effect on the HE11 mode is to increase the radiation loss for frequencies above 10.2 GHz and decrease the radiation loss for frequencies below 10.2 GHz.