Coupled Electromagnetic-Thermal Simulation of Plasmonic Optical Waveguide

A coupled electromagnetic-thermal analysis method is presented for the simulation of plasmonic optical waveguides (POWs). The unavoidable absorption of light results in heating of waveguides themselves, which will obviously affect the performances of the POWs. The experimental methods to study the thermal effect of the POWs is not only costly but also inefficient. Thus, the numerical method plays an important role in the analysis of POWs. In this paper, we utilized the finite-element method with tetrahedral elements to get the electric field and temperature distributions of the POWs. Numerical results verify the accuracy and capability of the proposed method.