Bend-induced long period grating in a helical core fiber.

We report on a new type of long-period-grating generated in a helical core fiber by bending. The grating arises from bend-induced modulation of an equivalent refractive index in the helical core with a period equal to the helix pitch. We experimentally demonstrate that such grating induces multiple resonant couplings between the fundamental modes guided in the central core and the helical side-core. We have also shown that by varying a direction of bending, one can generate the phase shifted grating. The experimental results are supported by numerical simulations based on the coupled mode equations.

Polarimetric Sensitivity to Torsion in Spun Highly Birefringent Fibers.

We report on experimental studies of polarimetric sensitivity to torsion in spun highly birefringent fibers. Two classes of spun fibers were examined, namely spun side-hole fibers and birefringent microstructured fibers with different birefringence dispersion, spin pitches, and spin directions. The polarimetric sensitivity to torsion was determined by monitoring a displacement of the spectral interference fringes arising in the output signal because of interference of polarization modes and induced by an additional fiber twist. Both the experimental results and the analytical predictions showed that the sensitivity to torsion normalized to the fringe width in the spun highly birefringent fibers increased asymptotically with the twist rate to the value of 1/ π rad-1. We have also studied the polarimetric response to temperature in the spun side-hole fibers. We have found that, in contrast to the torsional sensitivity, the temperature sensitivity decays asymptotically to zero with increasing fiber twist rate. Therefore, the spun fibers with short spin pitches are especially well suited for torsion measurements because the torsional sensitivity and the range of linear response are both enhanced in such fibers, while at the same time, the cross-sensitivity to temperature is reduced.

IR femtosecond pulsed laser-based fiber Bragg grating inscription in a photonic crystal fiber using a phase mask and a short focal length lens.

Fiber Bragg grating inscription with infrared femtosecond pulsed lasers in photonic crystal fiber is far from being trivial due to the presence of air holes in the cladding region and the non-linear nature of the absorption process inducing the required refractive index changes. We have studied this problem numerically and experimentally for a phase mask-based writing setup equipped with short focal length cylindrical lenses, which are often used for through-coating and high temperature stable grating writing. We have shown that for a cylindrical lens with a focal length f of 10 mm, the hexagonal lattice PCF needs to be translated away from the beam waist position by around 15 µm to efficiently deliver the energy to the core region. We have also investigated the importance of the PCF's angular orientation and we have shown that for some optimal positions the same behavior is observed for cylindrical lenses with different focal lengths. Finally, we have succeeded in writing a 4 dB strong grating in a photonic crystal fiber with a 1030 nm femtosecond pulsed laser in around 4 seconds, using an acylindrical lens with f = 10 mm.

Measurement of birefringence and ellipticity of polarization eigenmodes in spun highly birefringent fibers using spectral interferometry and lateral point-force method.

We show that the spectral interferometry method and the lateral point-force method used up to now to measure spectral dependence of the group and the phase modal birefringence in highly birefringent fibers with linearly polarized eigenmodes, can be after some modifications extended for the class of spun highly birefringent fibers with elliptically polarized modes. By combining the two methods, it is possible to determine spectral dependence of the group and phase elliptical birefringence in spun highly birefringent fibers. Moreover, if the fiber spin pitch is independently measured, the spectral dependence of ellipticity angle of polarization eigenmodes as well as the built-in linear phase and group birefringence, can be also obtained using the analytical relations between the parameters of spun and non-spun fibers. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in spectral measurements (700-1600 nm) of the spun side-hole and microstructured highly birefringent fibers with different birefringence dispersion and spin pitches ranging from 4.1 to 200 mm.

Spectral-domain measurements of birefringence and sensing characteristics of a side-hole microstructured fiber.

We experimentally characterized a birefringent side-hole microstructured fiber in the visible wavelength region. The spectral dependence of the group and phase modal birefringence was measured using the methods of spectral interferometry. The phase modal birefringence of the investigated fiber increases with wavelength, but its positive sign is opposite to the sign of the group modal birefringence. We also measured the sensing characteristics of the fiber using a method of tandem spectral interferometry. Spectral interferograms corresponding to different values of a physical parameter were processed to retrieve the spectral phase functions and to determine the spectral dependence of polarimetric sensitivity to strain, temperature and hydrostatic pressure. A negative sign of the polarimetric sensitivity was deduced from the simulation results utilizing the known modal birefringence dispersion of the fiber. Our experimental results show that the investigated fiber has a very high polarimetric sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure, reaching -200 rad x MPa(-1) x m(-1) at 750 nm.

Highly birefringent dual-mode microstructured fiber with enhanced polarimetric strain sensitivity of the second order mode.

We present the results of theoretical and experimental characterization of a designed and manufactured dual-mode highly birefringent microstructured fiber. We also demonstrate the measured values of polarimetric temperature and strain sensitivity of both the fundamental and second order modes. As the mode field of the second order mode has a strong interaction with the fiber air holes, we observed a significant (over two orders of magnitude) increase in the polarimetric strain sensitivity of this mode in comparison to the fundamental mode. The enhanced strain sensitivity together with the low temperature sensitivity makes our fiber very attractive for application as extremely sensitive temperature independent strain transducers.

Highly birefringent microstructured fibers with enhanced sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure.

We designed, manufactured and characterized two birefringent microstructured fibers that feature a 5-fold increase in polarimetric sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure compared to the earlier reported values for microstructured fibers. We demonstrate a good agreement between the finite element simulations and the experimental values for the polarimetric sensitivity to pressure and to temperature. The sensitivity to hydrostatic pressure has a negative sign and exceeds -43 rad/MPa x m at 1.55 microm for both fibers. In combination with the very low sensitivity to temperature, this makes our fibers the candidates of choice for the development of microstructured fiber based hydrostatic pressure measurement systems.

Experimental and theoretical investigations of birefringent holey fibers with a triple defect.

We have manufactured and characterized a birefringent holey fiber of a new construction. The birefringence in this fiber is induced by the highly elliptical shape of the core, which consists of a triple defect in a hexagonal structure. Using a hybrid edge-nodal finite-element method, we calculated the spectral dependence of phase and group modal birefringence for spatial modes E11 and E21 in idealized and in real fiber, whose geometry we determined by using a scanning-electron microscope. Results of our calculations show that technological imperfections significantly affect the fiber's birefringence. Normalized cutoff wavelengths for higher-order modes relative to the filling factor were also determined for the idealized structure. We observed a significant disagreement between theoretical and experimental values of cutoff wavelengths, which was attributed to high confinement losses near the cutoff condition. We also measured the spectral dependence of the phase and the group modal birefringence for spatial modes E11 and E21. The measured parameters showed good agreement with the results of modeling.