A boundary integral equation method for photonic crystal fibers (Q2433906)

This paper formulates a boundary integral equation (BDE) for the eigenmodes of a photonic crystal fiber. This equation is defined on the interface between the regions of different refractive indices within a cross-section, rather than on the whole cross-section, which represents a computational advantage by reducing the dimension of the problem. The BDE is derived from Maxwell's equations in section 2 [note a missing factor 2 in front of the second integral in Eq. (10)]. A discretization strategy which accounts for the singularities of the linear operators in the BDE is discussed in section 3, in preparation for the numerical results that follow, in section 4. There, the method is validated by a numerical study of some characteristics of the eigenmodes (such as the effective refractive index or the rate of confinement loss) of an air-silica fiber and a photonic bandgap fiber, for different wavelengths or photonic crystal configurations.