A liquid crystal infiltrated spiral photonic crystal fiber (LCSPCF) is presented here for electrical tuning of two zero dispersion wavelengths (ZDWs) in the present communication window. The proposed LCSPCF shows tunability of the ZDWs from 1433 nm to 2136 nm due to the rotation of the infiltrated LC mesogen induced by the external electric field. Therefore, the ZDW can easily be shifted towards the available pump wavelength for effective supercontinuum generation (SCG) over a broad wavelength region. By tuning the bandwidth (BW) in between the two ZDWs the extension of the generated supercontinuum (SC) spectrum can also be electrically controlled. This will help the SCG in our desired band with optimum power budget. Moreover, the index guiding mechanism of the proposed soft glass LCSPCF shows improvement over the narrow operational bandwidth and the low nonlinearity of the band-gap guided silica LCPCF. Additionally, the solid core of the proposed LCSPCF is less lossy than the previously proposed liquid crystal core PCF.

Date Published: 23 August 2011
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 8173, Photonics 2010: Tenth International Conference on Fiber Optics and Photonics, 81731E (23 August 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.897880

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8173:
Photonics 2010: Tenth International Conference on Fiber Optics and Photonics
Sunil K. Khijwania; Banshi D. Gupta; Bishnu P. Pal; Anurag Sharma, Editor(s)