Optimisation of the performance of bow-tie polarising fibres

Certain designs of highly-birefringent fibres (e.g. Bow-Tie) have the ability to polarise light and this property is currently being actively exploited in a number of telecommunications and sensor devices. The polarising mechanism in the fibre is complex and poorly understood, but is known to involve preferential leakage of one polarised mode, the other propagating with relatively low loss. In effect, the fibre supports one polarised mode alone and is therefore capable of transmitting only linearly-polarised light