Enhanced lateral pressure tuning of fiber Bragg gratings by polymer packaging

Abstract The wavelength tuning of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) by virtue of a lateral or transverse load is attractive for a variety of applications in the field of optical sensing. However, the lateral pressure tuning of FBGs suffers from the drawback of low lateral pressure sensitivity, narrow tuning range and stress induced birefringence. In this paper, polymeric package technique is adopted to improve the lateral pressure sensitivity to as high as 0.3 nm/N/mm along with tuning range of nearly 1 nm without considerable pulse broadening and peak splitting. Finite element analysis of the lateral pressure tuning process of polymer packaged FBG corroborated with the experimental results.