Tunable Fiber Polarization Filter by Filling Different Index Liquids and Gold Wire Into Photonic Crystal Fiber

Abstract

A tunable fiber polarization filter by filling different index liquids into the central hole of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed and demonstrated. The dispersion characteristics and loss spectra of the polarization filter are evaluated by finite element method (FEM). The gold wires are selectively filled into the cladding air holes of the PCF. When the phase matching condition is satisfied, the liquid-core mode couples to surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) mode intensely. The resonance wavelength varies with the change of the structural parameters and liquids. By adjusting the refractive index of the liquid, we realize the polarization filter at the wavelength of 1.31, 1.49, and 1.55 $\mu$ m, respectively, under the optimized structural parameters. This is the first time to propose the narrowband polarization filter at the communication wavelength of 1.31 $\mu$ m to our best knowledge based on the coupling between liquid-core mode and SPP mode, and the full width half maximum (FWHM) is only 16 nm. The loss of X-polarized mode is 44336 dB/m at $\lambda$ = 1.31 $\mu$ m, and the corresponding loss of Y-polarization mode is 224 dB/m. By comparison, we find the birefringence in our structure is further better than that in conventional structure. High birefringence is helpful to separate the resonance wavelength positions of the two orthogonal polarized modes. The result also reveals that resonance loss becomes small with increasing the distance between liquid core and gold wire.