Abstract

Polarization-maintaining (PM) optical fiber is used in high-speed optical communication and fiberoptic interferometric sensing [1]. Existing PM optical fiber that is known for PANDA fibers intentionally form a large birefringence in the core radially [1]. By taking this structure, the PM function is obtained by suppressing the energy exchange between the orthogonal polarization components of the singlemode optical fiber. However, this principle is not effective in multimode fiber. In the past, it has been reported that a polymer optical fiber (POF) with its core fabricated using copolymer that can reduce intrinsic birefringence, namely, methyl methacrylate (MMA) and benzyl methacrylate (BzMA), exhibit a high extinction ratio compared to the other multimode optical fibers on the premise that no load is applied [2]. Therefore, in this study, POF of ternary core including 2,2,2-trifluoroethyl methacrylate (3FMA) in addition to the earlier material pair was fabricated. P (MMA / 3 FMA / BzMA = 52.0 / 42.0 / 6.0 (w / w / w) is known to be effective in eliminating two types of birefringence, namely, photoelastic birefringence and orientational birefringence [3]. As a result, it was proved that polarization maintaining effect is provided even when load is applied to this multimode fiber.

© 2017 Japan Society of Applied Physics, Optical Society of America