Tunable and rotatable birefringence controller based on electrical control of Liquid Crystal filled Photonic Bandgap fibers

Continuously tunable birefringence controllers by using liquid crystal photonic bandgap (LCPBG) fibers have been proposed. Here, we demonstrate the first compact electrically tunable and rotatable birefringence controller based on LCPBG fibers. A LCPBG fiber is mounted between two v-grooves fabricated in a silicon substrate by standard UV lithography and KOH wet etching. 200nm gold electrodes are deposited on the side walls of the grooves, forming a set of electrodes, which fix the fiber at four orthogonal corners relative to the core.