Simulation and computer aided design of large-scale photonic integrated circuits using the beam propagation method (BPM)

In this paper we briefly review the approach and capabilities of the BPM method, and its applications to photonic devices and largescale PICs such as arrayed-waveguide-grating WDMs. Many numerical and analytical techniques have been developed for optical waveguide modeling. After briefly surveying these techniques, the talk will focus on the finite-difference BPM and the problems to which it can be applied. The method allows efficient simulation in 2D or 3D, can incorporate polarization via both semi- and full-vectorial approaches, can handle anisotropic media, nonlinear effects, and wide-angle circuits, and can perform mode solving as well as propagation calculations. As a specific example of the difficulties in treating large scale circuits, We give two approaches to the design of the arrayed-waveguide-grating based routers used in WDM sytems.