Waveform Distortions in Femtosecond Laser Pulses Transmitting through Coated Optical Fiber Probes

We calculate the light field in metal-coated optical fiber probes under illumination of femtosecond laser pulses with the three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. By choosing the maximum of the calculated light field data in the time period of one light wave cycle at each spatial point, we obtain the amplitude distributions instead of the conventional light field distribution of a time instant. It is found that with an incident plane wave pulse of y-polarization, the output amplitude distributions of y-polarization have roughly a circled-cross-like pattern with two arc-like zero-amplitude zones. By analyzing the y-polarized waveforms versus time at the points near the arc-like zero-amplitude zones, we find that waveform distortions appear at points in the neighborhood of the zero amplitude lines and in the time intervals when two wave-packets overlap.