Study on the fabrication process of polarization maintaining photonic crystal fibers and their optical properties

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the fabrication process and the characteristics of polarization maintaining photonic crystal fibers (PM-PCFs). The PM-PCF is fabricated by stack-and-draw method, i.e., stacking silica, capillary tubes (m aking a PM-PCF preform) and drawing to optical fiber. Firstly, a PM-PCF preform is formed by stacking two kinds of capillary tubes around a solid silica rod and jacketing these stacked tubes with an outer silica tube (out-jacket tube). Later, the desired preform is drawn to a fiber in a high temperature drawing tower. We also compare the polarization properties such as polarization dependent loss, birefringence, and differential group delay of the fabricated PM-PCF with those of the conventional PANDA PM fiber.