Classification of symmetry properties of waveguide modes in presence of gain/losses, anisotropy/bianisotropy, or continuous/discrete rotational symmetry.

We study the symmetric properties of waveguide modes in presence of gain/losses, anisotropy/bianisotropy, or continuous/discrete rotational symmetry. We provide a comprehensive approach to identity the modal symmetry by constructing a 4 × 4 waveguide Hamiltonian and searching the symmetric operation in association with the corresponding waveguides. We classify the chiral/time reversal/parity/parity time/rotational symmetry for different waveguides, and provide the criterion for the aforementioned symmetry operations. Lastly, we provide examples to illustrate how the symmetry operations can be used to classify the modal properties from the symmetric relation between modal profiles of several different waveguides.