Exact Theory of Surface-Guided TM and Coupled Te-Tm Nonlinear Electromagnetic Waves.

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. There is at present a lot of interest in nonlinear electromagnetic surface and guided waves in materials with third order optical nonlinearities because of applications in optical signal processing and surface spectroscopy. Although nonlinear surface-guided waves have received extensive treatment, this has been mostly confined to TE polarised waves because of a number of difficulties associated with the TM polarisation. This thesis contains the first full treatment of nonlinear TM waves, and concludes with the first ever treatment of nonlinearly coupled TE-TM waves. The general form of the third order nonlinear electric polarisability of a medium is derived from first principles and is applied to the specific case of an isotropic material. This is used as the basis for a sophisticated mathematical model allowing the first exact calculations of TM polarised nonlinear surface and guided waves in both single and multiple interface planar structures. A number of different nonlinear mechanisms are considered and the dispersion properties of structures with both positive and negative dielectric functions are examined in detail. On the analytical front some new results are also presented and these, together with two analytical approximations from the early literature in this field, are assessed by comparing them with the exact numerical results. The sensitivity of nonlinear TM waves to some material properties, including saturation, diffusion and absorption, is considered in detail and the existing work on the stability of nonlinear surface-guided waves in general is reviewed briefly. Finally, a comprehensive study of the possibilities of nonlinear TE-TM coupling is given in terms of the interaction of nonlinear TE waves with nonlinear long and short range plasmons and a new type of nonlinear TM wave.