Self-alignment and instability of waveguides induced by forces of guided and radiated fields

We discuss a new effect of optical forces, namely, the self-alignment or instability of two parts of a waveguide broken by an offset and a gap. Using a mode matching technique, we investigate the case where there is no gap and only an offset. It is shown that for a TE incident mode, self-alignment occurs for small values of the waveguide thickness, whereas for large values, the system is unstable. For a TM incident mode, however, the situation is reversed and the two parts tend to self-align for large values of the waveguide thickness. It is also shown that the forces are due to the presence of both radiation modes, generated by the discontinuity, and the guided mode. For a TM incident mode, polarization surface charges are formed, that may cause strong self-alignment forces in both the transverse and longitudinal directions.

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