Tunable Mode Converter Device Based on Photonic Crystal Fiber with a Thermo-Responsive Liquid Crystal Core

Abstract

A compact tunable mode converter device based on the thermo-optically characteristics of liquid crystals (LCs) is proposed and numerically analyzed herein. The proposed mode converter consists of an asymmetric dual-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with a highly thermo-responsive LC core. The verification of the proposed mode converter was ensured through an accurate PCF analysis based on the vector finite element method. With an appropriate choice of the design parameters associated with the LC core, phase matching at a single wavelength is available in the important O-band wavelength region. The simulation results showed that high conversion efficiencies between LP01 and LP11 mode are readily achieved over a broad wavelength range from 1278 nm to 1317 nm. Likewise, the tunable capability of the proposed mode converter was evaluated when it was submitted to thermal changes; thus, we evidence the strong thermo-responsive dependence of the operating wavelength, mode conversion efficiency and full-width at the half maximum (FWHM) bandwidth. Finally, the fabrication tolerances of the devices were also investigated. Therefore, the thermo-responsive characteristics of this novel PCF mode converter can be of fundamental importance in the future space division multiplexing technology.

Asymmetric dual-core liquid crystal channel-based tunable mode converter

“…The tunability of LC materials against both temperature and applied electric field makes the infiltration of the LCs through the SOI structures extremely advantageous 20 , 21 . To introduce various tunable photonic devices, such as filters 22 , polarization beam splitters 19 , 23 , optical switches 24 , sensors 25 , and mode converters 26 , LCs infiltrating photonic devices have been employed.…”

Experimental Dataset of Tunable Mode Converter Based on Long-Period Fiber Gratings Written in Few-Mode Fiber: Impacts of Thermal, Wavelength, and Polarization Variations

“…SDM can be implemented in one of two ways. The first uses Multi-Core Fibers (MCF), with each core acting as an independent channel for information transmission [1][2][3][4]. It is worth saying that we generally distinguish between weakly coupled MCFs, where signal interactions between cores are usually undesirable, and coupled-core MCFs, where a smaller core pitch leads to a stronger intentional random coupling of signals in different cores.…”

“…Bulk-optic mode converters require critical alignment and have a large insertion loss. To overcome these problems, several fiber mode converters (using mode-selective directional couplers [1][2][3]21] and long-period gratings (LPGs) [22][23][24]) and waveguide mode converters (using Y-junctions [25], Mach-Zehnder interferometers [26,27], LPGs [18,19], etc.) have been proposed.…”

A photonic crystal fiber broadband mode converter with highly fitting propagation constant

“…As one of important research fields in recent years [18][19][20][21][22][23], photonic crystal fiber (PCF) have many unique properties that do not exist in traditional fiber, and based on the tunability of that, it can be applied to fabricate mode converters. In recent reports [24,25], mode converters based on PCF have been studied. The results show that the mode coupling efficiency can reach more than 99% near the central wavelength, but the coupling efficiency decreases rapidly when the working wavelength deviates from the central wavelength.…”