Stress-induced birefringence and fabrication of in-fiber polarization devices by controlled femtosecond laser irradiations.

Optical birefringence was created in a single-mode fiber by introducing a series of symmetric cuboid stress rods on both sides of the fiber core along the fiber axis using a femtosecond laser. The stress-induced birefringence was estimated to be 2.4 × 10(-4) at the wavelength of 1550 nm. By adding the desired numbers of stressed rods, an in-fiber quarter waveplate was fabricated with a insertion loss of 0.19 dB. The stress-induced birefringence was further explored to fabricate in-fiber polarizers based on the polarization-dependent long-period fiber grating (LPFG) structure. A polarization extinction ratio of more than 20 dB was observed at the resonant wavelength of 1523.9 nm. The in-fiber polarization devices may be useful in optical communications and fiber optic sensing applications.