Analysis of guided modes in photonic crystal fibers using the finite-difference time-domain method

An efficient finite-difference time-domain method is proposed for the full-wave analysis of guided modes in photonic crystal fibers. The three-dimensional hybrid guided modes can be calculated by a two-dimensional mesh, if one assumes that the propagation constant along the z-direction (propagation direction) is fixed. Furthermore, only real variables are used in the present method. Therefore, the computation time and computer memory are significantly reduced. The results for a honeycomb-based silica-air photonic crystal fiber are in very good agreement with the results from the plane-wave expansion method. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.