A photonic crystal fiber with optimized birefringence-stress stability for fiber optic gyroscope

Abstract

We proposed a novel photonic crystal fiber (PCF) composed of an inner hexagon air-hole lattice and an outer mechanical buffer structure, which could achieve high birefringence-stress stability. The mechanical and light-guiding property of the photonic crystal fiber was theoretically investigated using a full-vector finite element method. By proposing an evaluation method to measure the birefringence variation of the fiber under the radial stress, we demonstrates that the proposed structure could effectively reduce the radial stress-induced birefringence variation by 49.3 %. We further discussed the impact of the mechanical buffer parameters on the modal property as well as thermal conductivity of the fiber. The proposed fiber could find its promising application on the interferometric fiber optic gyroscope.