A liquid crystal coated tapered photonic crystal fiber interferometer

An experimental investigation on a liquid crystal coated tapered photonic crystal fiber (PCF) interferometer is presented in this paper. The interferometer is fabricated by tapering a small section of a PCF by collapsing the air holes and thinning down the air hole collapsed region to a micron size. Several interferometers are fabricated from different types of photonic crystal fibers and temperature dependence studies are carried out to select an intrinsically temperature insensitive interferometer that can be used with liquid crystal (LC) materials. The properties of the LC materials to be used with the tapered PCF interferometers are also discussed. Temperature tuning of the spectral response of tapered interferometers with different waist diameters coated with high index and low index LC materials are carried out and the characteristics are presented.