Synthesis of birefringent reflective gratings

The layer-peeling method for reconstruction of fiber and waveguide gratings is extended to the case of birefringent reflective gratings with polarization-dependent background index and polarization-dependent effective index contrast. Using a discrete grating model, we characterize the set of possible reflection and transmission Jones matrices and show that for a given wavelength, the total structure can be represented by a discrete reflector sandwiched between two retardation sections. In reflection the discrete reflector acts as a partial polarizer. A method for designing birefringent gratings is developed and tested numerically.