Computation of optical modes in axisymmetric open cavity resonators

The computation of optical modes inside axisymmetric cavity resonators with a general spatial permittivity profile is a formidable computational task. In order to avoid spurious modes the vector Helmholtz equations are discretised by a mixed finite element approach. We formulate the method for first and second order Nédélec edge and Lagrange nodal elements. We discuss how to accurately compute the element matrices and solve the resulting large sparse complex symmetric eigenvalue problems. We validate our approach by three numerical examples that contain varying material parameters and absorbing boundary conditions (ABC). © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.