Bending Losses of the Asymmetric Slab Waveguide

Abstract

The bending losses of the asymmetric slab waveguide are computed. The computation is based on the knowledge of the exact form of the solution of Maxwell's equations of the bent structure and the additional assumption that the field near the bent waveguide can be approximated by the field of the straight waveguide. The result of this theory is in good agreement with an existing theory. It appears that the bending loss formula can be used to estimate the bending losses of the round optical fiber if the mode parameters entering the formula are replaced by the corresponding mode parameters of the round fiber. We present curves that allow the numerical evaluation of the bending loss of the lowest order even TE mode of the symmetric slab waveguide.