In-Fiber Acousto-Optic Interaction Based on Flexural Acoustic Waves and Its Application to Fiber Modulators

Abstract

The design and implementation of in-fiber acousto-optic (AO) devices based on acoustic flexural waves are presented. The AO interaction is demonstrated to be an efficient mechanism for the development of AO tunable filters and modulators. The implementation of tapered optical fibers is proposed to shape the spectral response of in-fiber AO devices. Experimental results demonstrate that the geometry of the tapered fiber can be regarded as an extra degree of freedom for the design of AO tunable attenuation filters (AOTAFs). In addition, with the objective of expanding the application of AOTAFs to operate as an amplitude modulator, acoustic reflection was intentionally induced. Hence, a standing acoustic wave is generated which produces an amplitude modulation at twice the acoustic frequency. As a particular case, an in-fiber AO modulator composed of a double-ended tapered fiber was reported. The fiber taper was prepared using a standard fusion and pulling technique, and it was tapered down to a fiber diameter of 70 μm. The device exhibits an amplitude modulation at 2.313 MHz, which is two times the acoustic frequency used (1.1565 MHz); a maximum modulation depth of 60%, 1.3 dB of insertion loss, and 40 nm of modulation bandwidth were obtained. These results are within the best results reported in the framework of in-fiber AO modulators.