Scaling rules for transverse magnetic waves propagating in nonlinear thin-film optical waveguides

For TM-polarized waves, a mode power measure is applied to characterize nonlinear thin-film optical waveguides in an approach analogous to that we recently proposed for TE-polarized waves. For design conditions in which all the guided waves are induced by the nonlinearity of the film, we study how the power level threshold needed for wave propagation differs between the TE and the TM modes of polarization. Since our description is based on universal parameters, our results are applicable to different geometries of waveguides through simple scaling rules.