Nondegenerate Surface-Wave Mode Coupling Between Dielectric Waveguides

A new variational derivation of the coupling coefficient is given for the problem of nondegenerate surface-wave modes on parallel dielectric waveguides. The results coincide with those of a number of different methods in the literature on the degenerate case, but all give distinct results in the nondegenerate case. These differences are examined and compared with the exact solution, whereby the approximations involved can be evaluated for the case of two parallel slab waveguides.