Seminumerical approach for modeling side-polished microstructured optical fiber-based devices

We developed a simple seminumerical method to model, get design parameters, and estimate performance of side-polished microstructured optical fiber (SPMOF)-based devices. As an example, we analyze a SPMOF directional coupler and show good agreement between the available experimental results and our theoretically estimated characteristics of such a coupler. To further demonstrate the utility of our design approach, we also propose a new wavelength filter design based on the use of a SPMOF half-coupler, which is loaded with an overlay planar waveguide and should find applications as a gain-flattening filter for erbium-doped fiber amplifiers or as a bandstop filter, in general. To show the applicability of our approach even to surface plasmonic components, we also propose a SPMOF polarizer design, which could be formed by coating the top polished surface of a SPMOF half-coupler with a metal layer.