Study of lineal and non-lineal transmission of an optical fiber Sagnac interferometer as a bidirectional device

The optical fiber Sagnac interferometer is a versatile system that has been investigated for a variety of applications such as optical switchers, filters, demultiplexers and passive mode-locked laser. In many cases, this arrangement is designed using a symmetrical coupler with two of their ports connected making a loop and generally the analysis have been focused in the transmission of the signal propagated in only one direction. Therefore in the present work a complementary study of the system considering the analysis for the lineal and non-lineal transmission as a bidirectional device has been performed. The experimental setup consists of different optical fiber lengths inside the cavity loop (between 100 and 500 m) with highly twisted singlemode fiber, a quarter wave retarder placed asymmetrically in one arm and a 50/50 coupler. The results have shown that for low optical powers, it is possible to adjust the system transmission in both propagation directions with the rotation of the retarder wave. On the other hand, in high optical power levels, this arrangement showed that the transmission increases slowly for the case when both the input and the output beams have the same polarization. This behavior can be used for pedestal suppression in a light pulse. Furthermore, for the case when the output signal polarization is orthogonal respect to the input one, the transmission changes quite fast. This effect can be used for applications such as the passive mode-locking.