Local Reconstruction of Birefringence in Bent Waveguides by Polarization-Sensitive Optical Low-Coherence Reflectometry

Abstract. Polarization-sensitive optical low-coherence reflectometry (PS-OLCR) is advantageously exploited to recover local birefringence evolution inside planar waveguides, with a micrometer spatial resolution. In particular, PS-OLCR characterizations on bent waveguides have experimentally highlighted a bend-induced birefringence dependence on the square of the radius of curvature