Modal analysis of a multimode polarization-maintaining plastic optical fiber fabricated using poly(methyl methacrylate/benzyl methacrylate) copolymer

We report an experimental demonstration of a multimode polarization- maintaining fiber that has extinction ratio (ER) of 14.0 dB at 1 m propagation, and this value was compared to those measured from different kinds of commercially available multimode fibers. The sample fiber was fabricated using poly(methyl methacrylate/benzyl methacrylate), which we named as polarization-maintaining graded-index plastic optical fiber. A measurement setup was developed in order to measure the ER in the cases when different points of the fiber core was launched. Birefringence and the output near field pattern for each launching points have exhibited a clear correlation to the measured ER.l