Fiber mode coupling in transmissive and reflective tilted fiber gratings.

Whereas core-mode reflection and core-mode-to-radiation-mode coupling in tilted fiber Bragg gratings is well understood, as is coupling between a core mode and higher-order core and cladding modes in untilted gratings, here we analyze in detail the coupling among core modes and cladding modes in reflective and transmissive tilted fiber gratings. We show that strong coupling between an LP(01) core mode and the exact (1m) cladding modes occurs in a transmissive tilted grating for nearly any tilt angle except angles close to 90 degrees, whereas the LP(01)-to-(lm) cladding mode coupling (l not equal 1) is appreciable only for tilt angles just below 90 degrees (approximately 88 degrees). In a reflective grating, strong coupling between the LP(01) core mode and the exact (1m) cladding modes occurs only for angles less than approximately 5 degrees, whereas coupling to (1m) cladding modes for m > 1 occurs only for angles greater than approximately 5 degrees. Coupling among bound core modes exhibits a similar behavior, except that in general the coupling is stronger. Experimentally we show coupling to both higher-order bound core modes and cladding modes in a transmissive tilted grating at visible and near-infrared wavelengths.