Lateral mode analysis in semiconductor lasers using a cubic spline approximation of the refractive index profile

A method employing a cubic spline approximation of the refractive index to solve the one-dimensional wave equation is presented. The average errors and computation times are compared with those obtained using a staircase method and an improvement of several orders of magnitude in accuracy with only a small increase in computation time for a given step size is shown. An iterative algorithm to determine the propagation constant is also presented.<
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