Investigation of Optical Thin Films Printed on the Surface of Facets of Photonic Crystal Fibers

Optical fibres are widely used in various applications as a medium for optical signals or optical transfer. This transport can be realized on long distance, compared to free space optics, which significantly extends reach of applications. Free space optics and fibre optics are combined in practice to yield the maximum performance of individual components forming a particular system. In such cases, light coupling from free space into fibres is required and it is frequently implemented with the use of lenses. An optical signal coupled into a fibre may also need certain modifications of spectral and spatial properties to allow its propagation down the fibre or reduce the amount of power carried in. The above requirement has been fulfilled by modifying surface of facets of photonic crystal fibres. By extrusion of a certain amount of host material from the surface, it is possible to obtain a structure resembling a thin film or an opaque layer for certain wavelengths. Several different structures of photonic crystal fibres and materials are considered to show influence of such thin-film on signal properties. This investigation is carried out in context of abilities of ablation of material from surfaces of photonic crystal fibres. Only certain shapes and geometrical arrangements can be considered. One of the goals is to specify, which of them are key for potential modification of spectral characteristics of photonic crystal fibres. The printed structures could potentially work like a thin-film ablation. Rigorous and versatile finite difference method has been employed to model propagation of light, its incidence onto a surface of the photonic crystal fibre, and subsequent propagation down the fibre. The simulations are carried on small pieces of photonic crystal fibres, with the length of tens of micrometres, due to well-known demands of the simulation technique on computational resources. Nevertheless, such a simplification is valid, since the structure is longitudinally uniform beyond the thin-film layer. However, this is aspect is not covered in the presented paper and it is our ongoing effort. Finally, the goal is to verify if the investigated structures can work as a slot waveguide.