Isha Sharma

IIT kharagpur, India

Electric Field-Induced Mode Switching in Few-Mode Fibers

---

Biography

Abstract

In the past few years, there has been a lot of focus of optical fiber technology in global broadband communication system. In the area of data communication, the exponential growth of cloud computing has resulted in a significant growth in communication traffic. To overcome it, few-mode fibers and mode division multiplexing (MDM) has emerged as a favourable solution. We devised an all fiber technique for selective excitation and switching between higher order modes excited in a few-mode fiber. In our previous research, we introduced a novel approach based on cantilever beam deflection techniques for sensing the surrounding electric field. We conducted a series of experiments to investigate and validate the effectiveness of this method. Now, we implement our cantilever technique to achieve the switching between higher order modes based on introducing a controlled perturbation offset in the input launching conditions. We coat the fiber with BiFe0.9Co0.1O3 as probe sample and placed it in an electric field. The experimental setup for mode switching is illustrated in Fig. 1(i). On applying the electric field, we observe the phenomenon of mode switching within the FMF. Figure 1(ii) visually illustrates the mode profiles and their transformations as the electric field is applied, for cases with varying plate separations