Design and Fabrication of a Fiber-Integrated Mode-Selective Photopolymer Grating Coupler

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop a node for an optical add/drop multiplexer, which is capable of packet switching at very high speeds and is controlled by light. The D-Fiber is employed as the transmission medium and the grating formation and polymerization is implemented on the fiber. The optical multiplexer is constructed by cascading two different photonic structures formed on the planar side of the D-Fiber. Multiplexing is performed by forming a temporary (transient) grating; which is the subject of another project in parallel at our laboratory. Right after this grating, will be the structure that is the subject of this thesis, which is the permanent structure fabricated via photopolymerization. The temporary grating breaks the resonance using nonlinear optical effects, coupling the fiber mode into the higher-order mode and the permanent structure extracts the mode out selectively to another fiber. Due to the very fast response of the nonlinear effects, an optical switch capable of transferring optical packets to other waveguides is formed. Photopolymerization is a method that can be used to fabricate photonic structures such as photonic crystals or permanent gratings, holographically or by direct-writing. The project involves the fabrication of the aforementioned photonic structure via photopolymerization. Even though the main aim of this project is not materials research, extensive effort has been put into optimizing the polymer recipe and characterization of the materials and processing properties.