Temperature-Sensitive Photonic Liquid Crystal Fiber Modal Interferometer

Abstract

In this paper, we present an experimental investigation of the photonic crystal fiber (PCF) and photonic liquid crystal fiber (PLCF) modal interferometers. The PLCF interferometer is fabricated by infiltrating a liquid crystal (LC) into the PCF and then splicing the effective PLCF between two single-mode fibers (SMF). By heating the PLCF interferometer, we present a possibility to tune optical properties of the propagating light. We also compare PCF- and PLCF-interferometer responses in the presence of changing external temperature conditions.

Keywords

• Fiber optics
• modal interferometers
• nematic liquid crystal
• optical fiber devices
• optical fiber sensors
• photonic crystal fibers