Three-dimensional analysis of bending losses in dielectric optical waveguides with arbitrary refractive-index profile

Abstract

A three-dimensional analysis of bending losses in dielectric optical waveguides is presented. It constitutes a nontrivial generalization of previous two- and three-dimensional studies by other authors. Our analysis is based on homogeneous integral equations for the total radiation field and suitable asymptotic approximations for Green’s functions. A key role is played by a new three-dimensional approximation for a relevant Bessel function with large order and argument (the former being larger than the latter). A nontrivial check of the consistency of all those approximations is given. General formulas are presented for the radiated field and the energy flow and for a bending-loss coefficient in three dimensions. Numerical results are also given, in order to assess the difference between the results of other authors and ours. Such a difference is rather small for monomode behavior near cutoff, increases as the behavior of the waveguide changes from monomode to multimode, and decreases as the parameter V increases for a given core radius and propagation mode.