Abstract

We report on highly reproducible low-loss fusion splicing of polarization-maintaining single-mode fibers (PM-SMFs) and hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PCFs). The PM-SMF-to-HC-PCF splices are characterized by the loss of 0.62 ± 0.24 dB, and polarization extinction ratio of 19 ± 0.68 dB. The reciprocal HC-PCF-to-PM-SMF splice loss is found to be 2.19 ± 0.33 dB, which is caused by the mode evolution in HC-PCF. The return loss in both cases was measured to be �??14 dB. We show that a splice defect is caused by the HC-PCF cleave defect, and the lossy splice can be predicted at an early stage of the splicing process. We also demonstrate that the higher splice loss compromises the PM properties of the splice. Our splicing technique was successfully applied to the realization of a low-loss, environmentally stable monolithic PM fiber laser pulse compressor, enabling direct end-of-the-fiber femtosecond pulse delivery.

© 2008 Optical Society of America

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History
Original Manuscript: May 1, 2008
Manuscript Accepted: June 17, 2008
Revised Manuscript: June 16, 2008
Published: June 20, 2008

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Author Affiliations

Jesper T. Kristensen, Andreas Houmann, Xiaomin Liu

DTU Fotonik - Department of Photonics Engineering

Dmitry Turchinovich

DTU Fotonik - Dept of Photonics Eng

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