Isorefractivity: Teaching and research perspectives

The isorefractive condition augments the set of geometries for which electromagnetic boundary value problems are solvable with the mode matching method. From a teaching viewpoint, understanding the isorefractive condition enables to appreciate the underpinnings of the special functions used in certain coordinate systems. From a research viewpoint, the isorefractive condition extends the set of problems for which an exact solution is known, thus leading to new canonical problems that can be used as challenging benchmarks to validate numerical approaches.