Hybrid active polymer/silica microstructured photonic crystal optical fibers

  • PDF / 790,668 Bytes
  • 10 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
  • 107 Downloads / 226 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


Hybrid active polymer/silica microstructured photonic crystal optical fibers B. J. Eggleton1, and C. Kerbage OFS Fitel Laboratoriess, Murray Hill, NJ 07974 1 Also with Specialty Fiber Devices, OFS Fitel, Somerset, NJ 08873, U.S.A 1 Phone: 908 582 3087, Fax: 908 582 6055, Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT We review several applications of microstructured photonic crystal optical fibers that incorporate active materials infused into the air-holes. The tunable optical characteristics of the materials combined with the unique structure of the fiber enable a number of functionalities including reconfigurability and tunability for various fiber device applications. We describe a brief characterization of the modes and discuss the experimental results of the fibers. INTRODUCTION Microstructured photonic crystal optical fibers (MOFs) [1] are typically all silica optical fibers in which air-holes are introduced in the cladding region and extend in the axial direction of the fiber [1-4]. Recent interest in such fibers has been generated through potential applications in optical communications [1-5]. Figure 1(a) shows the earliest work reported by Kaiser et al. who demonstrated low loss single material fibers made entirely from silica [1]. Russell and coworkers later demonstrated the so-called photonic crystal MOF, shown in Figure1(b) [6]. This advance generated enormous interest in this new class of MOFs leading to the first demonstration of a true photonic bandgap MOF by Cregan et al. in 1999 [4]. MOFs that incorporate an array of air-holes surrounding a very small silica core, as shown in Fig. 1(d), can provide unique dispersion [7] and nonlinear characteristics that have been used to demonstrate a number of novel effects, including the generation of a broadband supercontinuum and a zero GVD as low as 765 nm [8].

Figure 1. Chronological outline of different MOFs (a) Air-silica MOF, Kaiser et al. (1974) (b) Photonic crystal MOF, Russell et al. (1996), (c) Photonic bandgap MOF, Cregan et al. (1999), and (d) Dispersion control MOF, Ranka et al. (1999).

K4.2.1

Most research activities in the field of MOFs have been concerned in the guidance properties of the fundamental mode localized in the core region of these fibers, for example, bend loss, cutoff wavelength [6], mode field diameter [9], and dispersion [7, 9]. They have focused on potential applications requiring long lengths of fiber where, for example, the fiber provides unique dispersion characteristics [8], reduced nonlinearity [10], or broad single-mode spectral ranges [6]. In this paper, we review certain applications of MOFs for photonic devices. In this context, we consider MOFs in which active materials are infused into the air-hole regions yielding hybrid tunable optical fiber devices. In these applications the active materials provide tunabilty of the optical properties of the microstructured cladding region. The core region can incorporate a doped region allowing for the inscription of grating structures. The resulting hybrid waveguide can be exploited in the de

Data Loading...