We investigate the usefulness of the topology optimization with the finite element method in the optimization of an H-plane waveguide component. Design sensitivity is computed efficiently using the adjoint variable method. Employing the optimization procedure, optimized structures of an H-plane waveguide filter and T-junction are obtained from an initial homogeneous structure.

Making up a microwave simulator is tried, which has an analysis method based on the finite-element method as a solver and commercial tools as a pre- and post-processor of a graphical user interface. The platform of this simulator is Windows, but, since the codes and configuration files to be created are common on Windows, Unix, and Linux, the simulator running on any platform may be made up at the same time, except a document on which all the commands of the simulator are embedded and executable. Using the simulator, the transmission properties of a 2- and 3-D waveguide discontinuity in a microwave circuit and eigenmodes of a 2- and 3-D waveguide are analyzed, and the computed results are presented in graphs of S parameters and plots of the electric field distribution.

Making up an electromagnetic wave simulator based on the FEM is tried, which may run on some widely used platforms by use of Java and a single commercial tool. Since the codes and configuration files to be created for this simulator are common, one can construct the simulator running on the platforms at the same time. Using this simulator, the transmission properties of two- and three-dimensional waveguide discontinuities in optical and microwave waveguides are analyzed, the inverse problem in material constant measurement is solved, and the computed results are presented including plots of the electric field distribution.

We present a design optimization method of H-plane waveguide components, based on the level set method with the finite element method. In this paper, we propose a new formulation for the improvement of a level set function, which describes shape, location, and connectivity of dielectric in a design region. Employing the optimization procedure, we demonstrate that optimized structures of an H-plane waveguide filter and T-junction are obtained from an initial structure composed of several circular blocks of dielectric.

A method to reconstruct the surface shape of a scatterer from the relative intensity of the scattered field is proposed. Reconstruction of the scatterer shape has been studied as an inverse problem. An approach that employs boundary-integral equations can determine the scatterer shape with low computation resources and high accuracy. In this method, the reconstruction process is performed so that the error between the measured far field of the sample and the computed far field of the estimated scatterer shape is minimized. The amplitude of the incident wave at the sample is required to compute the scattered field of the estimated shape. However, measurement of the incident wave at the sample (measurement without the sample) is inconvenient, particularly when the output power of the wave source is temporally unstable. In this study, we improve the reconstruction method with boundary-integral equations for practical use and expandability to various types of samples. First, we propose new boundary-integral equations that can reconstruct the sample shape from the relative intensity at a finite distance. The relative intensity is independent from the amplitude of the incident wave, and the reconstruction process can be performed without measuring the incident field. Second, the boundary integral equation for reconstruction is discretized with boundary elements. The boundary elements can flexibly discretize various shapes of samples, and this approach can be applied to various inverse scattering problems. In this paper, we present a few reconstruction processes in numerical simulations. Then, we discuss the reason for slow-convergence conditions and introduce a weighting coefficient to accelerate the convergence. The weighting coefficient depends on the distance between the sample and the observation points. Finally, we derive a formula to obtain an optimum weighting coefficient so that we can reconstruct the surface shape of a scatterer at various distances of the observation points.

We propose the design method of a compact long-wavelength-pass filter implemented in a two-dimensional metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) waveguide with three stubs using a transmission line model based on a low-pass prototype filter, and present the wavelength characteristics for filters in an MDM waveguide based on 0.5- and 3.0-dB equal-ripple low-pass prototype filters.

In this study, we conduct guided mode analyses for chalcogenide glass channel waveguides using As2Se3 core and As2S3 lower cladding to determine their single-mode conditions across the astronomical N-band (8-12µm). The results reveal that a single-mode operation over the band can be achieved by choosing a suitable core-thickness.

We propose an algorithm for the scattering analyses of gratings with various local defects based on the difference-field boundary-element method (DFBEM). In the algorithm, the defect in the grating is partitioned, and the DFBEM is sequentially applied for each defect section. We validate the proposed algorithm by demonstrating its flexibility for various defect topologies for a locally deformed grating.

A numerical investigation revealed the relation between the groove randomness of actual-size diffraction gratings and the diffraction efficiencies. The diffraction gratings we treat in this study have around 10000 grooves. When the illumination wavelength is 600 nm, the entire grating size becomes 16.2 mm. The simulation was performed using the difference-field boundary element method (DFBEM). The DFBEM treats the vectorial field with a small amount of memory resources as independent of the grating size. We firstly describe the applicability of DFBEM to a considerably large-sized structure; regularly aligned grooves and a random shallow-groove structure are calculated by DFBEM and compared with the results given by standard BEM and scalar-wave approximation, respectively. Finally we show the relation between the degree of randomness and the diffraction efficiencies for two orthogonal linear polarizations. The relation provides information for determining the tolerance of fabrication errors in the groove structure and measuring the structural randomness by acquiring the irradiance of the diffracted waves.

In this study, the bending losses of chalcogenide glass channel optical waveguides consisting of an As2Se3 core and an As2S3 lower cladding layer were numerically evaluated across the astronomical N-band, which is the mid-infrared spectral range between the 8 µm and 12 µm wavelengths. The results reveal the design rules for bent waveguides in mid-infrared astrophotonic devices.

In a free-space method using a pair of horn antennas with dielectric lenses, we demonstrated that the permittivity of a sample can be estimated with good accuracy by equalizing a measured transmission coefficient of a sample to a transmission coefficient for a Gaussian beam, which is approximately equal to the transmission coefficient for a plane wave multiplied by a term that changes the phase. In this permittivity estimation method, because the spot size at the beam waist in a Gaussian beam needs to be determined, we proposed an estimation method of the spot size by employing the measurement of the Line in Thru-Reflect-Line calibration; thus, no additional measurement is required. The permittivity estimation method was investigated for the E-band (60-90 GHz), and it was demonstrated that the relative permittivity of air with a thickness of 2mm and a sample with the relative permittivity of 2.05 and a thickness of 1mm is estimated with errors less than ±0.5% and ±0.2%, respectively. Moreover, in measuring a sample without displacing the receiving horn antenna to avoid the error in measurement, we derived an expression of the permittivity estimation for S parameters measured using a vector network analyzer, and demonstrated that the measurement of a sample without antenna displacement is valid.

In this paper, the function expansion based topology optimization is employed to the automatic optimization of the waveguide dispersion property, and the optimum design of low-dispersion slow-light photonic crystal waveguides is demonstrated. In order to realize low-dispersion and large group index, an objective function to be optimized is expressed by the weighted sum of the objective functions for the desired group index and the low-dispersion property, and weighting coefficients are updated through the optimization process.