Fusion splicing: the penalty of increasing the collapse length of the air holes in ESM-12B photonic crystal fibers

For optimum fusion splicing process of a photonic crystal fiber, the collapsing of the air holes at any photonic crystal fiber is the key point of either increasing or decreasing the total splice loss. In this paper, an experimental study has been carried out to investigate the relation between total splice loss or total fiber attenuation due to splice loss and the length of the collapsed region of the air holes. This is done by splicing ESM-12B photonic crystal fiber between two equal lengths of single mode fibers and measuring the attenuation at different arc times and arc powers. The results showed that the increase in the length of the collapsed air holes region results in higher loss, therefore, higher fiber attenuation