Modal Solutions of Active Dielectric Waveguides by Approximate Methods

Approximate methods are used to obtain the modal properties of stripe-contact semiconductor injection lasers using a planar three-layer waveguide model. The central active layer has a dielectric constant that varies smoothly along the direction parallel to the heterojunction boundaries. The complex dielectric constant under the stripe contact is dependent on the gain and approaches a constant value at large lateral distances. The two methods are compared in terms of their modal propagation constants. An application of the effective index method facilitates a physical understanding of dielectric waveguide modes as well as providing an efficient calculation procedure.