title: Robust and environmental insensitive fiber optic Sagnac interferometer for microwave photonic applications.
abstract: A technique that allows a fiber optic Sagnac interferometer based microwave photonic device to be implemented using non-polarization maintaining components inside the Sagnac loop while still obtaining an output that is insensitive to changes in environmental conditions is presented. It is based on inserting the non-polarization maintaining components in between a polarization beam combiner and a Faraday rotator mirror inside the loop. The technique also introduces a phase bias to the light propagating inside the loop. Experimental results demonstrate that the discretely and continuously tunable Sagnac loop based signal processors implemented using non-polarization maintaining components have an environmentally insensitive frequency response.
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Institute of Photonics and Optical Science, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. erwin.chan@sydney.edu.au
authors.forename: Erwin H W
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Chan