Exact Theory of TE-Wave-Scattering From Blazed Dielectric Gratings

This study of dielectric sawtooth gratings with deep grooves serves several purposes. Its principal aim is to investigate a particular analytical method for describing deep gratings with the view of applying it (at a later time) to waveguide-grating couplers. However, even without the added complication of one more dielectric interface that characterizes the waveguide problem, an examination of the response of dielectric gratings with deep grooves to a plane wave, incident at an angle that would lead to total internal reflection at the corresponding smooth surface, can teach us much about the expected behavior of waveguide-grating couplers. The literature on the electromagnetic theory of diffraction gratings is vast. However, most papers are limited to discussions of metallic gratings,1,2 and only a few papers mention dielectric gratings with sawtooth-shaped grooves and plane waves incident at angles larger than the critical angle for total internal reflection.3 When it comes to providing numerical information for a given particular case, each worker must write a computer program to solve the problem at hand, since no publication can cover all conceivable cases in graphical form. 1295