This paper describes the adaptation of Rouard’s method, a familiar computational technique used in thin-film coating design, to the analysis of waveguide diffraction gratings. The approach can be used to generate the spectral and the angular characteristics of arbitrary straight-line gratings (periodic or nonperiodic), is easy to implement on a computer, and provides an intuitively appealing picture of the operation of such gratings. The application of the thin-film method is extended to periodic gratings as well as to gratings having either a linear or a quadratic chirp in period. Specific examples are used to compare the results of the thin-film computational method with those predicted by previous authors.

© 1985 Optical Society of America

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