Visible and near infrared wavelength photonic crystal fiber splitter for multiwavelength spectral domain optical coherence tomography

Abstract

We report the fabrication and performance of the 2×2 photonic crystal fiber (PCF) splitter that was designed as a single mode splitter at the visible and near infrared and used as the beam splitter for a spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) system. The PCF splitter has been made by coupling PCFs to a planar lightwave circuit (PLC) splitter chip. The PLC splitter chip was fabricated to have a single mode property with 630 nm cutoff wavelength and the PCFs were securely connected to the PLC chip through PCF block arrays having lithographically fabricated V grooves. The core width of the splitter chip was about 4 μm×4 μm and the core-cladding index difference was about 0.15%. With the implemented PCF PLC splitter, we have obtained a low excess loss of 1.2 dB and a low polarization-dependent loss of 0.19 dB at 680 nm with wide band coupling property. With the proposed 2×2 PCF splitter, SD-OCT images of human finger, nail, and tooth successfully obtained by using 680 nm, 840 nm, and 930 nm SLD source. This PCF PLC splitter is expected to have high resolution OCT.