Abstract
Theoretical studies on liquid crystal filled photonic crystal fiber (LC-PCF) are presented. The effects of electric birefringence of liquid crystal (LC) in the LC-PCF and the transmitting properties of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) are investigated by using the full vector plane wave expansion and beam propagation method. The simulation results show that the electrically controlled LC-PCF can act as not only a terahertz (THz) switch with about 0.55 THz bandwidth, but also a tunable polarization controller for changing the polarization state of the fundamental mode.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Xu L, Zhang X C, Auston D H. Terahertz beam generation by femtosecond optical pulses in electro-optic materials. Appl Phys Lett, 1992, 16: 1784–1786
Wu Q, Zhang X C. Free-space electro-optic sampling of terahertz beam. Appl Phys Lett, 1995, 67: 3523–3525
Hirata A, Kosugi T, Takahashi H, et al. 120-GHz-band millimeter-wave photonic wireless link for 10-Gb/s data transmission. IEEE Trans Microw Theory Tech, 2006, 54: 1937–1944
Han P Y, Cho G C, Zhang X C. Time-domain transillumination of biological tissues with terahertz pulse. Opt Lett, 2000, 25: 242–244
Chan W L, Moravec M L, Baraniuk R G, et al. Terahertz imaging with compressed sensing and phase retrieval. Opt Lett, 2008, 33: 974–976
Kawase K, Ogawa Y, Watanabe Y. Non-destructive terahertz imaging of illicit drugs using spectral fingerprings. Opt Expr, 2003, 11: 2549–2554
Guo R X, Akiyama K D, Minamide H, et al. Frequency-agile terahertz wave spectrometer for high-resolution gas sensing. Appl Phys Lett, 2007, 90: 121127–121130
Brucherseifer M, Nagel M, Haring P, et al. Label-free probing of the binding state of DNA by time-domain terahertz sensing. Appl Phys Lett, 2000, 77: 4049–4052
Loffler T, May T, Weg C A, et al. Continuous-wave terahertz imaging with a hybrid system. Appl Phys Lett, 2007, 90: 091111–091114
Federici J F, Schulkin B, Huang F, et al. THz imaging and sensing for security applications-explosives, weapons and drugs. Semicond Sci Technol, 2005, 20: 266–280
Liu H B, Plopper G, Earley S, et al. Sensing minute changes in biplogical cell monolayers with THz differential timedomain spectroscopy. Biosens Bioelectron, 2007, 22: 1075–1080
Costa D B, Yacoub M D. Dual-hop transmissions with semi-blind relays over Nakagami-m fading channels. Electron Lett, 2008, 44: 214–215
Li J, Hong Z. Terahertz wave switch based on silicon photonic crystals. Appl Opt, 2007, 46: 5034–5037
Ghattan Z, Hasek T, Wilk R, et al. Sub-terahertz on-off switch based on a two-dimentional photonic crystal infiltrated by liquid crystal. Opt Commun, 2008, 281: 4623–4625
Wilk R, Vieweg N, Kopschinski O, et al. Liquid crystal based electrically switchable Bragg structure for THz waves. Opt Expr, 2009, 17: 7377–7382
Zhang H, Guo P, Chang S J, et al. Liquid-crystal-filled photonic crystal for terahertz switch and filter. J Opt Soc Am B, 2009, 26: 1379–1386
Reyes G D, Quema A, Ponseca C, et al. Low loss single mode terahertz waveguiding using Cytop. Appl Phys Lett, 2006, 89: 211119–211122
Bise R T, Windeler R S, Kranz K S, et al. Tunable photonic band gap fiber. In: Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibit, 2002, 466–468
Du F, Lu Y Q, Wu S T. Electrically tunable liquid-crystal photonic crystal fiber. Appl Phys Lett, 2004, 85: 2181–2183
Scolari L, Gauza S H, Xianyu H Q, et al. Frequency tenability of solid-core photonic crystal fibers filled with nanoparticledoped liquid crystal. Opt Expr, 2009, 17: 3754–3764
Wu B, Zhang H, Chang S J, et al. Magnetically tunable liquid crystal terahertz switch based on Bragg fiber. Acta Phys Sin, 2009, 58: 1838–1843
Ren G B, Gong Y D, Shum P, et al. Polarization maintaining air-core bandgap fibers for terahertz wave guiding. J Quantum Electron, 2009, 45: 506–513
Ertman S, Wolinski T R, Pysz D, et al. Low loss propagation and continuously tunable birefringence in high-index photonic crystal fibers filled with nematic liquid crystals. Opt Expr, 2009, 17, 19298–19310
Alkeskjold T T, Bjarklev A. Electrically controlled broadband liquid crystal photonic bandgap fiber polarimeter. Opt Lett, 2007, 32, 1707–1709
White T P, Mcphedran R C, Sterk C M, et al. Resonance and scattering in microstructured optical fibers. Opt Lett, 2002, 27, 1977–1979
Litchinitser N M, Dunn S C, Usner B, et al. Application of an ARROW model for designing tunable photonic devices. Opt Expr, 2004, 12, 1540–1550
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
HOU Yu was born in 1984. He received the B.S. degree in electronic science and technology in 2007, and the M.Sc. Degree in circuits and systems in 2010, both from Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, Currently, he is a Ph.D. student in Nankai University. His research interests include numerical modeling of THz fibers and THz waveguide devices.
CHANG ShengJiang was born in 1965. He received his B.S. degree in physics in 1987, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in optical Engineering in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He is now working as a professor at Nankai University and his research interests include terahertz technology and science, optical information processing, and laser technique. Dr. Chang is a member of the optical society of China.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hou, Y., Fan, F., Wang, X. et al. Terahertz switch and polarization controller based on photonic crystal fiber. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 55, 106–113 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-011-4486-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-011-4486-2