Discussion Forum

Hello everybody,

is it possible to model optical self heating in COMSOL? Currently I'm trying to simulate a silicon photonic ring resonator/modulator using the wave optics module. The resonance of such a device is very sensitive to temperature and measurements show that optical self heating plays an important role in its characteristics. So if the ring is resonant, significant optical power couples into the ring and heats it up due to absorption. This detunes the ring. If the ring is excited slightly off the resonance, it depends on to which side you are off, because on the one side, heating the ring results in even worse resonance or to the other side in a better resonance, shifting the resonance more to the excitation wavelength, resulting in better coupling, resulting in more absorption, resulting in higher temperature, back to the beginning... Unfortunately I don't know, which physical interfaces I have to use to model this behaviour and how to put them together. Could anybody help me?