Coupled-mode theory

The authors give a brief historic perspective of the coupled mode theory. The development and applications of the theory in microwaves in early years and in optoelectronics and fiber optics in recent years are described. They then consider lossless coupling of two modes in time. Two coupled resonance circuits, or two coupled microwave or optical resonators, are the physical examples. The start-up of a parametric oscillator is another example. Then they look at the formal derivation of coupled mode theory and consider the more general case when the modes are not energy-orthogonal and the energies are not necessarily positive. A more detailed account of the nonorthogonal coupled mode theory developed in the last five years for optical waveguides is given