An electrically tunable all-fiber polarization controller based on deposited thin-film microheaters

The authors describe a novel electrically tunable all-fiber polarization controller based on evaporated microheaters deposited on short sections of polarization maintaining fiber fusion spliced at fixed 45/spl deg/ angles. Efficient birefringence tuning of /spl ap/2.4/spl deg//mW at 1300 nm and /spl ap/1.9/spl deg//mW at 1550 nm for the fiber microheaters is shown, and the dynamic response of a prototype device is presented. Potential applications include compact, low loss, economical polarization controllers and polarization mode dispersion emulators.