Abstract

One-dimensional (ID) gratings have proven to be key elements in fibre-based (eg. filters and dispersion compensaters) and semiconductor waveguide-based (eg. DFB lasers) optoelectronic devices. By extrapolating front work done on photonic bandgap materials,¹ there are several new opportunities that might arise by developing waveguides textured with 2D periodic gratings.² However, the well-known scalar-coupled mode theory, which successfully describes the 1D structures, does not apply in 2D.³ To address this, we have developed a self-consistent Green’s function formalism that quantitatively describes the dispersion and lifetimes of the photonic eigenstates of 2D textured waveguides. A 2D, vector coupled mode theory results by applying a simple approximation to our more general model.

© 1999 Optical Society of America