Polarization dispersion characteristics analysis of optical rib waveguides in organic/polymer photonic devices

Abstract An efficient and high-precision single parameter variational effective index method is proposed to investigate the polarization dispersion characteristics of polymer optical rib waveguides. The transverse distribution of the effective refractive index of the waveguide is calculated by using effective index method (EI), and the distribution of optical field is approximately expressed as piecewise functions in each sub-region. The optical field with high precision is obtained by variational effective index method (VEI), and the effective index of polymer rib waveguide is computed by scalar variational formula taking the improved piecewise functions as the accurate optical field distribution. Based on the vector wave equation that governs the guided modes, the effective index is modified by perturbation method (PM) to obtain more accurate dispersion characteristics. The dispersion characteristics and transverse field distributions of the fundamental and higher order modes are analyzed in polymer multimode rib waveguides with different structure parameters and dimensions. The method has advantages such as high precision, low calculation cost and high efficiency, which provides an analytical method for the fabrication of polymeric electro-optic devices.