Characteristics of bent terahertz antiresonant reflecting pipe waveguides

Bending characteristics of the terahertz (THz) pipe waveguides are numerically investigated. Numerical results reveal that the inherent periodic feature of the loss spectrum, resulting from the antiresonant reflection guiding mechanism, is nearly unaffected under bending. However, attenuation constant of the fundamental (HE11) mode becomes polarization dependent for the bent pipe waveguide, and the polarization perpendicular to the bending plane experiences less bending losses. Moreover, unlike the straight case where a larger air-core diameter leads to a smaller attenuation constant, increasing core diameter of the bent pipe waveguide is unable to reduce attenuation constant effectively if the propagation mode is a whispering gallery mode. Finally, behavior of the bent pipe waveguide connected to a straight one is also examined in this work. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America