Accurate simulation of travelling-wave electroabsorption modulators through a novel coupled electromagnetic and carrier-transport model

This paper proposes a simplified but computationally efficient finite-element approach that reduces the field-transport problem to a DC analysis followed by a guided-wave linearized problem, in which the full-wave EM model presented previously is coupled to the semiconductor transport equations (electron and hole continuity equations for heterostructures including thermionic emission in the drift-diffusion approximation). Photogenerated current in the active region is included in the model introducing a carrier radiative generation term in the continuity equations G = [/spl alpha/(E)/h/spl nu/]P/sub opt/. The complete derivation of the model will be described elsewhere. A nonlinear circuit model of the semiconductor waveguide, to be exploited for circuit- or system-level simulations, can be derived by carrying out the analysis at different DC electrical and optical bias points.