High extinction ratio elliptical core Panda-type polarization-maintaining fiber coil

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Materials Science

Background:

• Traditional Panda-type polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) coils suffer from performance degradation due to winding stress and temperature fluctuations.
• Existing PMF coils are sensitive to environmental factors, limiting their application in demanding sensing scenarios.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate an improved Panda-type PMF coil with enhanced polarization-maintaining capabilities.
• To investigate the impact of geometric and stress birefringence in a novel fiber design for PMF coils.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of an elliptical core Panda-type PMF coil utilizing a fiber with both geometric and stress birefringence.
• Characterization of the coil's extinction ratio at a controlled temperature (20°C).
• Assessment of polarization cross-talk and gyroscope output to determine sensitivity to winding stress and temperature.

Main Results:

• The elliptical core Panda-type PMF coil achieved an extinction ratio of 20.13 dB at 20°C.
• This represents a significant improvement of 3.71 dB compared to traditional Panda-type PMF coils.
• The novel fiber coil exhibited low sensitivity to both winding-induced stress and temperature variations.

Conclusions:

• The proposed elliptical core Panda-type PMF coil demonstrates superior polarization-maintaining performance over conventional designs.
• This advanced fiber coil is highly promising for applications requiring high-precision optical fiber sensing.
• The dual birefringence mechanism effectively mitigates environmental influences on polarization stability.