Radiation from bent optical waveguides

Abstract

A simple method is presented for determining the radiation losses due to the bending of an optical waveguide. This method circumvents the use of continuous modes and reduces the problem to elementary antenna theory in which radiation is found from a known surface-current distribution. Practical results are given for the bent fibre of circular cross-section. i.e. a toroidal geometry, both for the HE11 mode and for rays in an overmoded fibre.