Polarization-maintaining optical microfiber

Abstract: We have successfully demonstrated a polarization-maintaining (PM) fused silica microfiber by adiabatically tapering a conventional polarization-maintaining fiber. Compared to standard single mode microfibers, the proposed PM microfibers exhibit robust polarization preserving characteristics under the presence of external perturbations such as bending. A polarization extinction ratio of 16dB is typically obtained through the device with a corresponding excess loss of 0.2dB. ©2010 Optical Society of America OCIS Codes: (060.2420) Fiber, polarization-maintaining; (260.1440) Birefringence; (220.4000) Microstructure fabrication; (220.4241) Nanostructure fabrication With recent advances in micro- and nanophotonics, optical micro-/nanofibers with diameters close to the wavelength of guided light have attracted considerable interest as promising building blocks for a variety of photonic applications [1-4]. One of the most important issues is the fabrication of polarization maintaining (PM) microfibers since unwanted changes in the polarization of the propagating signal can result in a considerable deterioration in system reliability and performance for many applications. There are two principal approaches to produce