ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes the principles that comprise the physical basis of optoelectronics. The practice of optoelectronics at the level of device and system design necessitates a familiarity with some quite advanced, and sometimes quite subtle, optical physics. When an electric field is applied to an optical medium the electrons suffer restricted motion in the direction of the field, when compared with that orthogonal to it. The fundamental mode of an optical fiber is split into two orthogonally polarized eigenmodes with different propagation velocities. The basic principles of optical waveguiding are quite straightforward. Waves are guided when they are constrained to lie within a channel between two other media, the refractive index of the channel material being slightly higher than those of the other media, so that the light can "bounce" along the channel by means of a series of total internal reflections (TIRs) at the boundaries between media.
