We present a full text of our theoretical study on the microbending and macrobending behavior of bow-tie fibers and similar anisotropic fibers. Our analysis shows that microbendings and macrobendings behave differently, and, on the theoretical side, different assumptions of the core and cladding anisotropies (whether equal or unequal) lead to drastically different results. In the case in which microbending is predominant, and for the practically existing case of unequal core and cladding anisotropies, our results agree, in the statistical sense, satisfactorily with the published experimental data. Microbending losses caused by the small-field effect as predicted by theory become a dominant factor under the idealized condition of equal core and cladding anisotropies. In the case of macrobending such as that in a bow-tie fiber with a constant curvature, and under the assumption of equal core and cladding anisotropies, the differential losses of the two orthogonally polarized modes virtually disappear, a phenomenon quite unlike the predicted behavior of a straight anisotropic fiber. We also discuss the composite case in which microbending is superimposed upon macrobending.
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