ANALYSIS OF OPTICAL WAVEGUIDES USING AN ANALOGY TO A MECHANICAL VIBRATION PROBLEM

Many waveguide problems in integrated optics may mathematically be described by a scalar Helmholtz equation. In this paper it will be shown, that the same equation arises in the analysis of a mechanical vibration problem (elastically bedded membrane). One can utilize this analogy for calculating the propagation characteristics and field distribution of optical waveguides by one of the wide spread mechanics Finite‐Element codes, which are available on many computer systems, including personal computers in recent years. As an example this computation by analogy method is employed for the computation of the propagation characteristic of a symmetric film waveguide.