Abstract

Intensity-dependent phenomena in optical guiding structures have attracted much interest in recent years because of their potential use in all-optical processing. Most papers concerned with modal analysis of nonlinear optical waveguides have dealt with planar structures. Recently, a scalar finite element method (FEM) has been applied to modal analysis of nonlinear optical channel waveguides.^1,2 Although the scalar FEM is approximate in a strict sense, in contrast to the vector FEM,^2,3 this approach has as its main advantages: the smaller matrix dimensions, no spurious solutions, and capability of easily computing the propagation constant at a given frequency. In the earlier works,^1,2 however, only the TE-like wave propagation is considered, and the intensity-dependent refractive index is assumed to be constant within each element. Hence, if the accuracy of solutions needs to be improved, the scale of computation becomes significantly large.¹

© 1995 IEEE