JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. LT-4, NO.

8, AUGUST 1986

99 1

Modal and Coupling Field Analysisof Optical Fibers with Circularly Distributed Multiple Cores and a Central Core
Abstract-The methods of modal and coupling field analysis for optical fibers with circularly distributed cores and a central core are presented. The point-matching technique combined with group theory is used for the modal analysis. The coupling field characteristics are analyzed by the superposition of eigenmode fields thus obtained.

72

I. INTRODUCTION EVELOPMENT IN manufacturing techniques opof D t i c a l fibers has enabled us to fabricate optical fibers of various structures. The variety of their structures can be categorized into two classes: the variety of the distribution of refractive index and thevariety of boundary geometry. We have studied the analysis method for optical fibers in the latter class using the point-matching procedure [ 11r3], and especially those in the case of symmetrically distributed multiple cores [4]-[6]. We have found the pointmatching procedure combined with group theory was an effective method to solve the problem of symmetrically distributed multiple cores. of mulWe present, in this paper, the modal analysis tiple-core fibers consisting of one central core surrounded by symmetrically distributed n-cores 171 by extending the abovepoint-matchingprocedure combined with group theory [6]. With the results of this modal analysis, coupling field characteristics are analyzed to describe how incident power to one core is transferred to another in multiple-core structures.
11. MODALANALYSIS Fig. 1 shows the cross section of multiple-core fibers to be discussed in the modal analysis in this paper. The multiple-core fibers analyzed previously have not included a central core [4], [5] to simplify the problem (we call this structure Type 17, while the fibers shown in (we call this structure Fig. 1 have a core at the center Type 2). Each of these cores isof the identical circular shape and has the same dielectric.constant. It is also assumed that all dielectric regions are lossless, isotropic,
Manuscript received January 6, 1986; revised March 6, 1986. Thiswork was supported in part by Grant-in-Aid the for Scientific Research of the Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture. The authors are with the University of Electrocommunications, ChofuTokyo, 182. Japan shi, IEEE 8608762.Log Number

Fig. 1. Multiple core structure to be analyzed.

and uniform along the z-axis. The propagation of electromagnetic waves along the positive direction of the z-axis with the propagation constant /3 at angular frequency w is represented by an implicit factor exp ( j u t - $2) in field functions. Wave equations for the z-components of electric-field E, and magnetic-field Hz ineach medium are given in the form as

where V :

Laplacian operator defined in the transverse plane, wavsnumbergiven by k = u G ineachmedium.

The z-components of the electric and magneticfield are denoted by E,,, and Hzv in the vth core, and E,, and Hz, in the cladding. Once the wave equations are solved, transverse components of electromagnetic fields are derived from E,, Hz, and Maxwells equations, and expressed as

H.=
tf

-.i
W2/Lo;

X - p2 (w~ivr

Eziaz -

PVtH,,)

(2b)

where a, isvector unit the

C.

of the z-axis and i denotes v or

0733-8724/86/0800-0991$01 O 1986 IEEE .OO

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JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. LT-4, NO. 8, AUGUST 1986

From dielectric the boundary conditions, tangential components of the field on the surface of the vth core (v = 0, 1, * , n) should be continuous.Theserelations can be written as
+

2nd

(E, : even) (E, : odd) (E, : even) (E, : odd)

cv,=
n

E,,, = E,,

Hz,

= =

Hz,
+

(34

Etv = t

Et,

H,,

H,,

(3b)
S1 =

[ -sin
cos

2nvl

where t denotes the tangential vector of the boundary in the transverse plane. In the previous paper, we emphasized that it is very important in the point-matching method to use symmetrically adapted functions in order to express the electromagnetic fields in such form as [ 5 ]

For the zeroth coordinate

E$) =

C aLFm(ro)cos (meo + cp) m

cp)
m

~ $ C bhFm(ro)sin (meo + = j
where

m = k n f l

(k=1,2,--*:mzO)

(2 = 1, 2,
where

0
TI2 as

(E, : even) (E, : odd)

is In the above expressions, the function Fm(rv) defined

C represents the rotation operation by counterclockwise L representevenandoddfunctions angle 2nvln, and with respect to On = 0 axis in Fig. 1, respectively. are and ?Trt) also even and odd functions with respect to en = 0 axis, respectively [ 5 ] . The integer 2 is the mode number. As seen in (4), it is clear that 1 and n - E represent an identical mode, so that we only consider the range of 0 5 1 5 n/2 in the analysis. Fromthegroup theory [ 5 ] , [8], it is understood that modes 1 (0 < 1 < n/2) consisting of even and odd functions are doubly degenerated, while the modes 0 and n/2 consisting of even and odd functions are nondegenerated. We employ multiple circular-cylindrical coordinates as shown in Fig. 1. Functions and must satisfy (1) so that E, and H , are represented by the linear combination of basic solutions of (1) in each cylindrical coordinate. For the vth (v # 0) coordinate, they are expressed as follows:

Jm(xlru) Fm(ru) =

(in the vth core,

+:

Km(xcrv) (in the cladding,

1 . .

x1 = k : - p2) x, = p 2 - k:)
p # v)

(in the pth core,

(8)
where Jm(xlru) Km(xcrv) and denote the Besselsfunctions of the first kind and the modified Bessels functions of the second kind, respectively. The above procedure, to select the electromagnetic-field functions enables us not only to distinguish each eigenmode and to know their state of degeneracy, but also to reduce the number of unknown coefficients in the homogeneous simultaneous equations [4], [ 5 ] . We analyzed dispersion characteristics of multiple core fiber systems in the case of 2 5 n 5 6, but present here the results in the case of n = 6 mainly. N, is the number of equally spaced matching pointstaken on the half circle of one of the surrounding core boundary. The number of matching points taken on the i n circle of the central core boundary N , is related to N, as

+: +:

E$

CuI a$Fm(rV)
m=O
M

cos me, (5a)

+ s,, mCO agFm(rv)sin mO, =

M

HZ;

C,,,
m=O

b$Fm(rV) me, sin

M
m=O

+ S,,

bgFm(ru) me, cos

(5b)

where the coefficients C,, and S,, correspond to trigonometric functions in (4) as

x or less where [ ] means the maximum integer equal to than x. Fig. 2 shows theconvergence of thecalculated normalized propagation constant @ / k cof the dominant mode for the two cases of core separation. From this figure, N, = 6 is found to be sufficient to obtain the accuracy order of Fig. 3 shows the dispersion property of the propagation

KISHI et al.: FIBERS WITH CIRCULARLYDISTRIBUTED MULTIPLE CORES

993

1
4
0

i?

.......... : T y p e

:
Z

1,002

-.Type

k,/k,=l.

01

kc a=12. 0

4
D/ a

Fig. 4. The relation between the core separation and Plk, in the case of N = 6. The dashed and solid lines denote Type 1 and Type 2, respectively. 1.00431

1
*
3

<
5

~
10

'

'

NUMBER OF MATCHING POINTS N,

Fig. 2. The convergence property of Plk, values of the dominant mode in the two cases of core separation.

LP,, MODE

Lp,, MODES

Fig. 5 . The transverse electric-field patternsof the odd eigenmodes of the 6 1 core system with the central core.

10 NORMALIZED FREQUENCY kc a

20

Fig. 3. The dispersion property in the case of n = 6 . The dashed and solid lines denote Type 1 and Type 2 , respectively.

constant. The computation CPU time required to calculate the value of a determinant is 0.07 s in the case of I 111. MICROWAVESIMULATIONEXPERIMENTS = 0, n/2, and 0.2 s in other cases on HITAC M-180 comIn addition to the modal analysis shown above, we have puter. Fig. 4 shows the relation between the core separation and the value of propagation constant. This indi- carried out microwave model experiments multiple-core of cates that when the separation becomes larger, mutual fibers to confirm the theory. We have made a model of couplingbecomesweakerandeigenvaluesconverge to multiple-core structures by using several dielectric rods of Rexolite (refractiveindex1.591).Resonatorswere that of the HEll mode of a monocore fiber. In Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, the propagation constants of the constructed by placing conductor plates at both ends of Type 1 multiple-core fiber are shownasdashedlines. them.Theresonancefrequency of the resonators, the These eigenvalues except those of the dominant modes number of crests of resonance modes, and the length of are approximately equal to those of Type 2 in the case of dielectric rods gave the relation between frequency and propagation constant, i.e., propagation characteristics [4], core separation larger than D/u = 3. The numbers written in the parentheses in Figs. 3 and [51. 4 are additional mode numbers to be used for coupling The results of measurements are compared with calcufield analysis. lated values in the caseof n = 5 in Fig. 6 which indicates Datterns of Fig. 5 shows the electric-field uolarizationexperimental good Furthermore, agreement. values for the

odd modes in the cross section. Arrows in thisfigure represent the orientation of electric field in each core. The modes alsocan becategorized by LP mode notations from their field patterns and the state of degeneracy. It is found that the orderof propagation constants coincides withthat of a monocore circular fiber. The polarization patterns of even modes can be obtained by rotating arrows by n/2 clockwise. The total number,of coupled modes of individual HEl modes is 2(n + 1). The number of odd modes 1 which is the same as that of even modes. is n

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JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. LT-4, NO. 8, AUGUST 1986

k , / k , = l . 01

.w

-:

COMPUTED

1
kc a

0
of the propa-

0.5
NORMALIZED PROPAGATION LENGTH

1.o
z/L

Fig. 6. The comparison of calculated and measured values gation constant in the case of n = 5 .

Fig. 7. The coupling characteristics of the 4-core system without the central core (Type 1) in the case of the excitation to the fourth core.

cores. Since the absolute values of the mode field vector of the surrounding coresareidentical, they are set as IV. COUPLING FIELD ANALYSIS unity. In the previous papers [3]-[6], we only analyzed the The result of the modal analysis shows that we can neeigenmodes of multiple-core fibers. Here we describe a glect Ak in the case of k # 1, because the existenceof the method to analyze the coupling properties of HEll modes central core doesnot affect those eigenmodes due to modal in both cases of the Type 1 system and the Type 2 system. symmetry. We distinguish the two modes in the caseof k The coupling field characteristics are analyzed by using = 1 by the superscripts and - as shown in Fig. the superposition of eigenmodes which is valid in the ab- 5 with the relation p: > p r . sence of random couplingprocesses.Witha means of By virtue, of the weakly guiding approximation,the modal analysis, we can write the transverse electric-field electromagnetic fields of eigenmodes satisfy the followdistribution of odd modes in the vth core in the following ing relation: form:

case of n = 2, 3, and 4 also have indicated good agreement with calculated values.

A k aoo -Jpkz e

(v

0)

where arvand a8,,represent the unit vector of r-direction and 0-direction in the vth coordinate, respectively. Note that the electric-field distribution of H E l l mode in each core can be represented with the polarization vector shown in Fig. 5 by assuming weak coupling. The integer k represents the mode number (inside the parentheses Fig. 5 ) . This is different from the mode number I (outside of the parentheses) used in modal analysis, and is defined by

so that we only have to consider the transverse electric fields. If random mode-coupling processes are negligible, the field is described by the superposition of the eigenmode fields as

E&)

= k (IlkElk(z).

(13)

I
n -1

(0

< I < nl2, <n

P k of this mode is greater than that of the another mode with the Same mode number)

(0

- 1 < n/2, P k of this mode is smaller than that of the another mode with the same mode number)

The coefficients (Ilk are determined by the excitation field conditions at z = 0. We assume three types of excitation field conditions as a) excitation of the nth core in the n-core system of Type 1, b) excitation of the nth core in the n 1-core system of Type 2, c)excitation of thecentralzerothcore in then 1core system of Type 2.

(I (I

= nl2) = 0)

(11)

where o k is the propagation constant of mode k , A k is the ratio of the amplitude of HEl1 mode vector in the central core to the amplitude of that in one of the surrounding

Figs. 7-11 show the transmission characteristics through thecoupling in multiple-core fiber systems on several excitation conditions: the 4-coresystem and 6-core

KISHI et al.: FIBERS WITHCIRCULARLYDISTRIBUTEDMULTIPLECORES

995

k , / k , = l . 01 D/a=3. 0 kc a=12. 0

a:

6 a.

0.5
Z/L

1.O

0.5
z/L

1.o

Fig. 8. The coupling characteristics of the 6-core system without the central core (Type 1) in the case of excitation to the sixth core.

Fig. 11. The coupling characteristics of the 6 + 1-core system with the central core (Type 2) in the case of the excitation to the sixth core.

The horizontal z-scale has been normalized by the beat length L . L is defined in the 2-core system which has the core separation d in the case of Type 1, or D in the case of Type 2. It is seen in the 2-core system that the incident power is perfectly transferred to another core at a halfbeat length L/2, and is transferred again to the excited core at a beat lengthL , in agreement with a coupled mode theory [9].

0.5 1.0 z/L Fig. 9. The couplingcharacteristics of the 2 + 1-coresystemwith the central core (Type 2) in the case of the excitation to the second core.

0.5
z/L

1.o

Fig. 10. The coupling characteristics of the 2 4 1-core system with the central core (Type 2) in the case of the excitation to the central core.

system of Type 1 (excitation condition a)), the 2 1-core system of Type 2 (excitation condition b) and c)), and the 6 + 1-core system of Type 2 (excitation condition c)). Since the normalized frequency k,a is12.0, coupled modes among the higher modesof individual cores are of the cutoff state. In these figures, the excited coreis marked with arrows whichrepresent electric-field vectorsexcitedat z = 0.

V. DISCUSSION This paper described the modal and coupling field analysis method for optical fibers with circularly distributed multiple cores and a central core. In the modal analysis, it was found that the systems with the central core (Type 2) could analyzed in a simbe ilar fashion to the case of those without the central core (Type 1) [4],[ 5 ] . The number of coupled modes among 1). The modes of I = 0 individual HEll modes is 2(n and I = n/2 are nondegenerated, while other modes are doubly degenerated. The electric-field pattern in Fig. 5 shows that the relation between the field patterns and approximate degeneracy is the same as the relation in the case of monocore circular fibers, known as LP mode patterns. The relation between the eigenmode fields of Type 1 and 2 can be estimated from Figs. 3-5. Except the dominant mode, the eigenmode fields of Type 1 are not affected by the existence of the central core unless the core separation is small. They can not couple the HEll mode of the central core becauseof modal symmetry. The even and odd dominant modes of Type 1 split into two kinds of modes by the existence of the central core: even and odd dominant modes (modes1') , and additional even and odd modes (modes 1-) . In the coupling field analysis using the resultsof modal analysis, coupled power. between two cores can be calculated straightforwardly. In the excitation conditionsa) and b) defined in Section IV, in general, the coupling is not a periodic function of z as shown in the 6-core system of Type 1, the 2 + 1 core system of Type 2, and the 6 + 1 core system of Type 2.

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On the contrary, the 4-core system of Type 1 as shown in Fig. 7 indicates that the variation of power distribution is is perfectly periodicfunction of z andincidentpower transferred to the core at the opposite side at zlL = 0.5. In the case of excitation condition coupling is periodic c), because only two coupled modes are excited. In this paper, only the resuits of odd-mode excitation have been presented. The reason is that the even and odd eigenmodes are nondegenerated except 1 # 0, n/2 ( k # n , n/2), butthesenondegenerated modes areapproximately regarded asdegeneratedinthe weakly guiding condition, therefore, the single polarization excitation is sufficient to consider. The modal characteristics and coupling property of the 2 1-core system of Type 2 are also in good agreement with the results of the analysis of three guide optical couplers in GaAs substrate based on the modified effective index method [lo]. It is emphasizedhere that thesimpleprocedurediscussed in this paper to evaluate the coupling properties among the HEll modes of an individual core using the superposition of eigenmodes enables us to estimate the coupled power quantitatively.

Naoto Kishi (S85) was born in Tokyo, Japan, on

March 11, 1960. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Electrocommunications,Tokyo, all in electricalengineering, in 1982 and 1984.respectively.He is working towards the Ph.D. degree at the University of Tokyo, where he is studying single-mode singlepolarization optical fibers. Mr. Kishi is a member of the Institute of Electronics and Communication Engineers of Japan.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors thank Dr. Y. Suzuki and S. Ozeki for their assistance and helpful comments.

REFERENCES
E.Yamashita,K.Atsuki, 0. Hashimoto, and K. Kamijo,Modal analysis of homogeneous optical fibers with deformed boundaries, IEEE Trans. Microwave 7heory Tech., vol. MTT-27, pp. 354-356, Apr.1979. E. Yamashita, K. Atsuki, and R. Kuzuya,Compositedielectric waveguides, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-28, pp. 986-990, Sept. 1980. E. Yamashita, Y. Nishino, and K. Atsuki, Analysis of multiple dielectric waveguide systems with extended point-matching method, in 1983 MTT-S Int. Microwave Symp. Dig., pp. 119-121, May-June 1983. E. Yamashita, S. Ozeki, and K. Atsuki, A new method for the modal analysis of optical fibers having symmetrically distributed multiple cores, in 1984 MTT-S Int. Microwave Symp. Dig., pp. 535-536, May-June 1984. E. Yamishita, S. Ozeki, and K. Atsuki, Modal analysis method for optical fibers with symmetrically distributed multiple cores, J . Lightwave Technol., vol. LT-3, pp. 341-346, Apr. 1985. E. Yamashita, N. Kishi, and K. Atsuki, Modal analysis of optical fibers with circularly distributed cores and a central core, in Proc. Sino-Japanese Joint Meet. Opt. -Fiber Sci. Electromag. Theory, pp. 27-30, May 1985. N. Kashima, E. Maekawa, and F. Nihei,Newtype of multicore fibers,in Proc. Topical Meet.Opt.-FiberCommun.Tech.Dig., pp. 46-47, Apr. 1982. T. Inui, Y. Tanabe, and Y . Onodera, Applied group theory-Group representation and physics, Shokabo Co., 1980 (in Japanese). A. W. Snyder, Coupled mode theory for optical fibers, J . Opt. SOC. Amer., vol. 62, pp. 1267-1277, Nov. 1972. J. P. Donnelly, N . L. DeMeo, Jr., and G. A. Ferrante, Three-guide opticalcouplers in GaAs, J. LightwaveTechnol., vol. LT-1, pp. 417-424, June 1983.

Eikichi Yarnashita (M66-SM79-F84) was born in Tokyo, Japan, on February 4, 1933. He received the B.S. degree from the University of Electrocommunications,Tokyo,Japan, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana, a!l in electrical engineering, in 1956, 1963, and 1966, respectively. From 1956 to 1964, he was a Member of the Research Staff on millimeter-wave engineering at the ElectrotechnicalLaboratory,Tokyo,Japan. While on leave from 1961 to 1963 and from 1964 to 1966, he studied solid-state devicesin the millimeter-wave region at the Electrophysics Laboratory, University of Illinois. From 1966 to 1967 he was with the Antenna Laboratory, University of Illinois. He became an Associate Professor in 1967, and Professor in 1977 in the Department of Applied Electronics, the University of Electrocommunications, Tokyo, Japan. His research work since 1956 has been on microstrip transmission lines, hybrid modes of goubau lines, wave propagation in a gaseous plasma, pyroelectric-effect detectors in the submillimeter-wave region, tunnel-diode oscillators, wide-band laser modulators,and various typesof optical fibers. Dr. Yamashita is a member of the Institute of Electronics and Communication Engineers of Japan and Sigma Xi.