Experimental investigation of birefringence of solid core polarization maintaining photonic crystal fibers

摘要

We characterized the temperature sensitivity of birefringence of typical solid core polarization maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PM-PCF). Mainly the temperature dependence of birefringence is determined by two factors which are thermo-optic effects and thermal expansion. Numerical simulation with ANSYS and RSOFT show that the birefringence temperature susceptibility can be described as a polynomial function of A (distance between small holes) and zero temperature coefficient may be obtained at optimum A. A high precision birefringence measure setup was built and the birefringence of five PM-PCFs samples with different A were measured under different temperature. The experimental result agreed well with the simulation.