A passive mechanical splice for polarization-maintaining fibers

The author reports that at least one cladding surface of the fiber can be used as an external reference in the splice to locate the polarization eigenaxis. This splice is versatile enough to allow active alignment of the polarization eigenaxis. A hybrid rectangular-shaped polarization-maintaining fiber with an external reference is used in the passive mechanical splice. Mean splice extinction ratios were measured at -28.6 and -33.4 with splice losses of 1.6 and 1.7 dB for passive and active alignment, respectively. Splice performance is more than adequate for most practical applications of polarization-maintaining fibers such as coherent communications, fiber devices and sensors, integrated optics, and photonic switching.<
>