Elliptical - core liquid crystal fibers

摘要

This paper presents analysis of light propagation in liquid crystal (LC) optical fiber waveguides with elliptical cores. In theory, the modal structure and its characteristics of the waveguides composed of extremely low-birefringence nematic liquid crystal acting as an elliptical fiber core and characterized by an index ellipsoid has been analyzed. The liquid crystal-core fiber waveguides have been modulated and simulated by using the Beam Propagation Method (BPM). Selected configurations of the nematic liquid crystal confined in the fiber core and their influence on modal structure of the anisotropic cylindrical waveguides have been analyzed. The theoretical analysis was accompanied by experiments with elliptical-core LC fibers in the polarimetric configuration. The results obtained indicate homogeneous LC orientation inside the elliptical core and as a consequence, in a certain temperature range, the LC waveguide acts as a fiber polarizer.