Chromatic dispersion measurement of holey fibres using a supercontinuum source and a dispersion balanced interferometer

Abstract

Chromatic dispersion of polarization modes in short-length holey fibres is measured by a spectral interferometric technique employing a broad-band supercontinuum source. The technique utilizes a dispersion balanced Mach–Zehnder interferometer with a fibre under test of known length inserted in one of the interferometer arms and the other arm with adjustable path length. We record a series of spectral interferograms to measure the equalization wavelength as a function of the path length difference, or equivalently the differential group index dispersion of the fibre. A five-term power series fit is applied to the measured data to obtain the chromatic dispersion over a broad spectral range (500–1600 nm). We measured by this technique the chromatic dispersion of polarization modes in four air-silica holey fibres and revealed the dependence of the position of the zero-dispersion wavelength on the geometrical parameters of the fibre.