Full resonant transmission of semi-guided planar waves through slab waveguide steps at oblique incidence

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that semi-guided planar waves can achieve full resonant transmission through slab waveguide steps at oblique incidence, with radiation losses eliminated beyond a critical angle, enabling lossless 90-degree corner configurations.

Contribution

It introduces a method to realize lossless wave transmission through waveguide corners by exploiting oblique incidence and critical angles, supported by rigorous numerical simulations.

Findings

Radiation losses vanish beyond a critical angle of incidence.

Lossless transmission achieved through 90-degree waveguide corners.

Effect persists in a full 3-D simulation framework.

Abstract

Sheets of slab waveguides with sharp corners are investigated. By means of rigorous numerical experiments, we look at oblique incidence of semi-guided plane waves. Radiation losses vanish beyond a certain critical angle of incidence. One can thus realize lossless propagation through 90-degree corner configurations, where the remaining guided waves are still subject to pronounced reflection and polarization conversion. A system of two corners can be viewed as a structure akin to a Fabry-Perot-interferometer. By adjusting the distance between the two partial reflectors, here the 90-degree corners, one identifies step-like configurations that transmit the semi-guided plane waves without radiation losses, and virtually without reflections. Simulations of semi-guided beams with in-plane wide Gaussian profiles show that the effect survives in a true 3-D framework.