Temperature tuning of polarization mode dispersion in single-core and two-core photonic liquid crystal fibers

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we present numerical and experimental results of propagation and polarization properties of the photonic liquid crystal fibers (PLCFs) in which only selected micro holes were filled with nematic liquid crystal (LC) guest materials. As a host photonic crystal fiber (PCF) structure, we used a commercially available highly birefringent PCF (Blazephotonics, UK). A tunable laser operated at infrared has powered the PLCFs under investigation infiltrated by the 1550 nematic LC synthesized at the Military University of Technology. Temperature induced changes of the polarization mode dispersion (PMD) as well switching between fundamental and higher order modes and also single-core and two-core propagation were successfully demonstrated.