Transverse asymmetry of the index modulation profile in few-mode fiber Bragg grating

Abstract

The transverse asymmetry of the index modulation profile in the asymmetric few-mode fiber Bragg grating (FM-FBG) was investigated. The transverse asymmetry of the index modulation profile will lead to mode conversion between modes with the different azimuthal orders, and this asymmetry is characterized by the attenuation coefficient a. We evaluated that the value of attenuation coefficient a was 0.2 µm-1, and grating amplitude χ was 2.8 x 10-4 for FM-FBG inscribed by UV single-side illumination. We found that the optimized value of a was 0.16 µm-1, at which the maximum mode conversion efficiency of LP01-LP11 can be achieved. The results of this paper provide great potential application in few-mode fiber (FMF) devices and mode division multiplexing (MDM) optical communication.