Experimental arrangement to measure dispersion in optical fiber devices

Abstract

Dispersion is a quite important parameter in systems based on optical fiber, especially in pulsed emission lasers, where the temporal width is affected by such parameter. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the dispersion provoked by each component in the cavity. There are various experimental interferometric arrangements to evaluate this parameter. Generally, these systems modify the wavelength to obtain information about the n(λ) dependency, which is contained in the interferogram phase. However, this makes the system quite slow and it requires tunable and narrow bandwidth laser sources. In the present work, results obtained from an arrangement based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer where one of the arms is the optical fiber under study, while the reference one is air, are presented. In order to determine the n(λ) dependency, a wide spectrum light source was used in the wavelength range of interest. The phase information was evaluated from the interferometric signal measured by an optical spectrum analyzer.