Abstract

In designing optical communication network devices flexible computational methods are needed to model optical waveguiding structures. Existing methods, like the beam propagation method (BPM), lack the possibility to take the interaction between counter-propagating waves in those structures into account. Recently, the Bremmer coupling series [l] has been proposed as part of a new field decomposition method [2, 3], the first term of which corresponds to the classical beam propagation method. In this paper we discuss the numerical implementation of this series. As an example to show the potential possibilities of the new approach we model the reflection phenomena inside a Multimode Interference (MMI) combiner.

© 1996 Optical Society of America