A finite element formulation for spectral problems in optical fibers

This paper is devoted to the presentation of a new finite element formulation for spectral problems arising in the determination of propagating modes in dielectric waveguides and particularly in optical fibers. As an example, we compute the coupling between two parallel optical wave guides. The originality of the paper lies in the fact that we take into account both the vector character of the problem (no weak coupling assumption) and the unboundness of the domain.