BPM-Matlab: an open-source optical propagation simulation tool in MATLAB

Beam-shaping through optical fibers facilitates miniaturized light delivery in fields such as endoscopy, communication, etc. As the stability of optical beam delivery and collection depends a lot on the fiber stability, the impact of fiber deformations on mode-coupling for different types of fibers should be analyzed. To this end, we present a numerical simulation tool modeling optical field propagation through fibers with arbitrary refractive index profiles, focusing on fiber twisting, tapering, and bending. Our simulation tool is compared against the state-of-the-art simulation software evaluating computational efficiency, versatility, and user-friendliness. The simulation tool is gratis, open-source, fast, and supports optional CUDA acceleration.