Numerical Techniques for Modelling Integrated Optical Circuits

The accurate design of integrated optical devices and circuits is strongly requested in order to develop innovative applications in several areas, as chemical/biological sensing, optical 5G and other modern high capacity communication systems, free propagation optical links, diagnostics and medical therapy, optical processing, optical imaging etc. The performance of optical systems integrating many functionalities dramatically depends on the advances in optical components as power dividers, modulators, switches, wavelength-demultiplexing devices (WDM), optical amplifiers, optical sources, detectors, filters. The availability on the market of software tools for computer-aided design (CAD) provides efficient instruments for the refinement of sophisticated optical circuitry. Despite of this scenario, the development of home-made computer codes based on classical approaches can be still very useful in several niche cases.