A slab optical waveguide with negative effective thickness

Two new asymmetric slab optical waveguides with a left-handed media (LHM) cover or substrate are studied. The effective thickness is derived by using normalized waveguide parameters. An analytical method is then proposed to calculate the universal effective thickness. We show that negative effective thickness exists in the waveguide with a LHM substrate, unlike in conventional waveguide or other LHM waveguides studied previously. However, for the waveguide with a LHM substrate, the shape of high-order mode behaves like that of a traditional slab waveguide, and neither the fundamental mode nor the other higher order modes have the novel phenomena of negative effective thickness. Both TE and TM modes are discussed.