Rigorous modeling of light injection into wave guides

We investigate light injection into wave guides by rigorous optical simulation. To this end the common rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) is extended to allow also structured transmission regions. This way we are able to analyze light coupling into wave guides without having to consider unwanted reflections at additional distant interfaces. In this talk we will focus on mode coupling into both step index and graded index fibers, where different coupling strategies and illumination types are considered. Furthermore, in order to study the limits of the scalar wave-optical treatment, we compare the results of our rigorous calculation to scalar BPM-type algorithms.