A rigorous 2D approximation technique for 3D waveguide structures for BPM calculations

We propose a rigorous 2D approximation technique for the 3D waveguide structures; it can minimize the well-known approximation errors of the commonly used effective index method. The main concept of the proposed technique is to compensate for the effective cladding index in the equivalent slab model of the original channel waveguide from the modal effective index calculated by the nonuniform 2D finite difference method. With simulations, we used the proposed technique to calculate the coupling characteristics of a directional coupler by the 2D beam propagation method, and the results were almost exactly the same as the results calculated by the 3D beam propagation method.