Study of Form Birefringence in Waveguide Devices Using the Semivectorial Beam Propagation Method

Waveguide devices based on nonbirefringent substrates may still have form birefringence if there exist index discontinuities. We demonstrate that the semivectorial beam propagation method can be used to study the polarization dependence in waveguide devices. We show that the calculated coupling lengths of planar directional couplers match within 3.5% of analytical solutions. We also present results on polarization dependencies of coupling lengths and bending losses of rib waveguide devices.