DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5478.415. An All-Dielectric Coaxial Waveguide

10.1126/science.289.5478.415

Crossref journal-article

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Science (221)

Abstract

An all-dielectric coaxial waveguide that can overcome problems of polarization rotation and pulse broadening in the transmission of optical light is presented here. It consists of a coaxial waveguiding region with a low index of refraction, bounded by two cylindrical, dielectric, multilayer, omnidirectional reflecting mirrors. The waveguide can be designed to support a single mode whose properties are very similar to the unique transverse electromagnetic mode of a traditional metallic coaxial cable. The new mode has radial symmetry and a point of zero dispersion. Moreover, because the light is not confined by total internal reflection, the waveguide can guide light around very sharp corners.

Bibliography

Ibanescu, M., Fink, Y., Fan, S., Thomas, E. L., & Joannopoulos, J. D. (2000). An All-Dielectric Coaxial Waveguide. Science, 289(5478), 415â419.

Authors 5

M. Ibanescu (first)
Y. Fink (additional)
S. Fan (additional)
E. L. Thomas (additional)
J. D. Joannopoulos (additional)

References 25 Referenced 237

R. A. Waldron Theory of Guided Electromagnetic Waves (Van Nostrand Reinhold London 1969).
B. E. A. Saleh and M. C. Teich Fundamentals of Photonics (Wiley New York 1991). (10.1002/0471213748)
See for example S. E. Miller and A. G. Chynoweth Eds. Optical Fiber Telecommunications (Academic Press New York 1979).
Fink Y., et al., J. Lightwave Technol. 17, 2039 (1999). (10.1109/50.802992) / J. Lightwave Technol. by Fink Y. (1999)
10.1126/science.282.5393.1476
10.1126/science.285.5433.1537
The first attempts at hollow waveguides in the optical regime actually involved metallodielectric materials. See for example
Miyagi M., et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 43, 430 (1983). (10.1063/1.94377) / Appl. Phys. Lett. by Miyagi M. (1983)
and
Matsuura Y., Harrington J., J. Opt. Soc. Am. 14, 6 (1997). (10.1364/JOSAA.14.001255) / J. Opt. Soc. Am. by Matsuura Y. (1997)
and references therein.
The waveguide also supports transverse magnetic (TM) modes but they do not appear in the plot because the cutoff frequency for the lowest lying TM mode is larger than 0.30 (2π c / a ).
10.1126/science.282.5394.1679
The idea of radially confining light by means of a dielectric multilayer structure was first investigated by P. Yeh et al. (14). Our work differs in that our waveguide is coaxial and the multilayer film is chosen so that there exists a frequency range of omnidirectional reflectivity. Both of these properties are important in order to create a TEM-like mode.
For example setting the index of refraction of the coaxial waveguiding region to 1.3 (instead of 1.0) with n 1 = 4.6 and n 2 = 1.8 the original omnidirectional reflectivity frequency range of 0.17 to 0.25 (2π c / a ) in Fig. 2B reduces to a range of 0.18 to 0.23 (2π c / a ) whereas the modal structure shown in Fig. 2C remains essentially unaltered.
A. Yariv Optical Electronics in Modern Communications (Oxford Univ. Press New York 1997).
C. J. Tranter Bessel Functions with Some Physical Applications (Hart New York 1969).
Yeh P., Yariv A., Marom E., J. Opt. Soc. Am. 68, 1196 (1978). (10.1364/JOSA.68.001196) / J. Opt. Soc. Am. by Yeh P. (1978)
Meade R. D., et al., Phys. Rev. B 77, 8434 (1993); (10.1103/PhysRevB.48.8434) / Phys. Rev. B by Meade R. D. (1993)
; erratum: Phys. Rev. B 55 15942 (1997). (10.1103/PhysRevB.55.15942)
The small discontinuity in m = 2 arises from a weak coupling to a resonant mode of the same symmetry localized deep within the core region.
N. J. Cronin Microwave and Optical Waveguides (Institute of Physics Bristol UK 1995).
For simplicity we only consider the intrinsic waveguide dispersion in all our calculations. In a real waveguide we would also have material dispersion which can be compensated for in the standard manner by judicious tuning of the waveguide parameters. Indeed the multitude of available parameters for the coaxial omniguide provides a much greater flexibility to accomplish this than in the case of an optical fiber.
We find that the very small group velocity exhibited by the m = 1 mode can be driven even to negative values with a proper choice of waveguide parameters.
We thank S. Johnson for many helpful discussions. Supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Office under grant DAAG55-97-1-0366 by the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center of NSF under award DMR-9808941 and by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant DE-FG02-99ER45778.

Dates

Type	When
Created	23 years, 1 month ago (July 27, 2002, 5:35 a.m.)
Deposited	1 year, 7 months ago (Jan. 13, 2024, 4:47 a.m.)
Indexed	1 month ago (July 27, 2025, 3:15 a.m.)
Issued	25 years, 1 month ago (July 21, 2000)
Published	25 years, 1 month ago (July 21, 2000)
Published Print	25 years, 1 month ago (July 21, 2000)

Funders 0

None

BibTeX

@article{Ibanescu_2000, title={An All-Dielectric Coaxial Waveguide}, volume={289}, ISSN={1095-9203}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.289.5478.415}, DOI={10.1126/science.289.5478.415}, number={5478}, journal={Science}, publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)}, author={Ibanescu, M. and Fink, Y. and Fan, S. and Thomas, E. L. and Joannopoulos, J. D.}, year={2000}, month=jul, pages={415–419} }

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