Abstract
The transfer matrix method used in thin-film optics is extremely useful when applied to analyze the propagation characteristics of electromagnetic waves in planar multilayer optical waveguides. This chapter aims to extend the transfer matrix method to treat the bound modes of the graded-index waveguide. Beginning with a brief introduction of the transfer matrix, we derived the eigenvalue equations and studied the multilayer optical waveguides. Different from the widely used WKB approximation, the transfer matrix obtained some important but different conclusions when applied to the graded-index waveguide, such as the exact phase shift at the classical turning points.
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© 2016 Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Wang, X., Yin, C., Cao, Z. (2016). Transfer Matrix Method and the Graded-Index Waveguide. In: Progress in Planar Optical Waveguides. Springer Tracts in Modern Physics, vol 266. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48984-0_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48984-0_2
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