Analytical calculation of nonreciprocal phase shifts and comparison analysis of enhanced magneto-optical waveguides on SOI platform

Transfer matrices for one-dimensional (1-D) multi-layered magneto-optical (MO) waveguides are formulated to analytically calculate the nonreciprocal phase shifts (NRPS). The Cauchy contour integration (CCI) method is introduced in detail to calculate the two complex roots of the transcendental equation corresponding to backward and forward waves. By virtue of perturbation theory and the variational principle, we also present the general upper limit of NRPSs in 1-D MO waveguides. These analytical results are applied to compare silicon-on-insulator (SOI) based MO waveguides. First, a three-layered waveguide system with MO medium is briefly examined and discussed to check the validity and efficiency of the above theory. Then we revisited the reported low-index-gap-enhanced NRPSs in MO waveguides and obtained substantially different results. Finally, the potential of common plasmonic waveguides to enhance the nonreciprocal effect is investigated by studying different waveguides composed of Metal, MO medium and dielectrics. Our study shows that the reasonable NRPSs can be optimized to some extent but not as much as claimed in previous publications.