Research on the influence of fabrication parameters on the performance of buried ion-exchanged glass waveguides using the variational method

The variational method is proposed to analyze the influence of the fabrication parameters on the performance of buried K ⁺-Na ⁺ ion-exchanged Er ³⁺-Yb ³⁺ ions co-doped glass waveguide. The unknown parameters of the Hermite-Gaussian functions as the trial field distribution are determined based on the scalar variational principle. It is demonstrated that the results calculated in this paper agree with those measured in the experiment. The mode dimensions, the effective refractive index, and the overlap factor as the functions of the fabrication parameters are investigated. These results of the variational analysis are useful for the design and optimization of Er ³⁺-Yb ³⁺ ions co-doped waveguides.