Propagation characteristics of a circular waveguide filled with a chiroferrite medium

A chiroferrite is made from chiral objects immersed in a magnetically biased ferrite. A waveguide including a chiroferrite is anticipated to possess some novel features due to the presence of chirality in combination with anisotropy. In this paper, the propagation characteristics of a circular metal waveguide filled with a chiroferrite medium are investigated by an analytical procedure. The equations of relations between the transverse components and the longitudinal ones of electromagnetic fields in general chiroferrite waveguides are derived in a cylindrical coordinate system. The coupled wave equations for the longitudinal electric and magnetic fields are decoupled into two Helmholtz equations which are then solved analytically. The characteristic equation is formulated for the circular chiroferrite waveguide. Propagation constants varying with the structural and material parameters have been calculated for several lower chiral modes. A number of interesting features have been revealed by the numerical results.