Rigorous characterization of silicon nanowires and nanophotonic devices

Rigorous modal solutions of silicon nanowires are presented by using a H-field based finite element formulation. It is shown that beam profiles of a circular nanowire are not circular. It is also shown that most of the optical power in a silicon slot waveguide can be confined in the low-index slot region. It is shown here that dispersion properties can be easily controlled by waveguide design of silicon nanowires, as waveguide dispersion dominates over the material dispersion for such sub-wavelength optical structures. Bending losses of such silicon nanowires are also presented.