Dispersion properties of the modes of chiral planar optical waveguides

The dispersion properties of the modes of chiral planar optical waveguides-symmetric and asymmetric-are analyzed. It is shown that all modes have circular polarization and are divided into two families with the right- and left-hand polarizations. Depending on the sign of the chiral parameter of the medium that: forms the waveguide layer, modes of one family exist only in a bounded frequency interval; i.e., they have critical frequencies both in the lower and upper parts of the frequency range. Graphs of the mode dispersion characteristics illustrating these new results are presented.