A partial introduction to dielectric slab waveguides
The simplest type of dielectric waveguide is composed by a slab with an infinite extension: it is the dielectric conceptual equivalent of the parallel plate metallic waveguide.
An introduction to the structure and the features of such waveguides is presented here. This is partial, because it could be updated and expanded, and it does not thoroughly deal with all the aspects of this problem.
The document tries to adopt a systematic approach towards the Maxwell equation solution, to determine the available field configurations that can carry a signal along a single direction, inside the dielectric structure. An attempt to mention also the preliminary concepts is made, like the oblique incidence of a wave on a surface, the Second order differential equations, Bessel functions, Snell’s law, evanescent waves.
A partial introduction to dielectric waveguides (click to download the pdf document).
Update: December 7th, 2018
Table of contents
- Introduction
- Oblique incidence of a plane wave on a surface
- Dielectric slab waveguides
- Symmetrical slab waveguides
- TE modes
- Even TE modes
- Odd TE modes
- TM modes
- Even TM modes
- Odd TM modes
- Normalized equations
- Dielectric cutoff condition
- Snell’s law and mode confinement
- TE modes
- Symmetrical slab waveguides
Appendices
- A subset of Second order differential equations
- Introduction
- A specific case
- Summary
- Complex angles in Snell’s law
- Propagator 1
- Propagator 2
- Summary
- Conclusions and sign conventions
- Snell’s law: an alternative formulation
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