Abstract

We propose a novel all fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) based on photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with liquid crystal (LC)-filled. The interference between the core mode and the cladding modes of a PCF is utilized. In order to excite the cladding modes, a region is formed by using fiber fusion splicer. We mainly studied the MZIs with different LC-filled structure. The measured results demonstrate that quite clear interference spectra can be obtained. Through analysis spatial frequency spectrum and temperature spectrum of MZIs with different LC-filled structure, we can obtain the MZI with two LC-filled holes has more interference peaks. The temperature sensitivities can be enlarged to −1.56666 nm/°C. The interferometer shows a good temperature tunability and sensitivity, which can be a good candidate for a highly tunable optical filtering and temperature sensing applications.

© 2016 Optical Society of America