Laboratory post-engineering of microstructured optical fibers

This chapter discusses recent developments in the field of microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) and provides an account of some of their interesting properties, such as new types of nonlinearities and dispersion profiles. It also discusses how such fibers may be used to produce novel devices by post-fabrication engineering techniques. Two numerical methods are used to investigate the properties of the transverse photonic crystal fiber (PCF): the plane-wave expansion method and the finite difference time domain (FDTD) technique. These simulations use a two-dimensional approximation of the experimental geometry. Both of these tools are used throughout to characterize transverse PCFs in various applications. The chapter discusses tapering as applied to MOFs and PCFs, both in the transversely probed and traditional longitudinal regimes and, specifically, the creation of silica nanowires. It classifies microfluidic tuning of MOFs into two regimes: static and dynamic. Static fluid tuning involves the infiltration of the microstructure with a stationary fluid to modify the device's optical response. Dynamic fluid tuning involves actuating the fluid inside the device, imbuing the device with a temporal response. The microfluidic interferometer, which uses the post-engineering methods to create a novel MOF-based device of enhanced functionality, is also presented.34 page(s