Compact cyclic fiber three-mode converter based on mechanical fiber grating.

In this Letter, a compact cyclic mode converter (CMC) based on a mechanical fiber grating is proposed and fabricated to eliminate differential mode group delay and mode-dependent loss in the mode division multiplexing (MDM) transmission system. The proposed CMC can realize cyclical interchange of any input mode among the LP/LP/LP modes, which requires only one mechanical grating. The mode conversion is evaluated by observing the mode field patterns of the fiber output. The experimental results prove that the introduction of CMC does not significantly degrade the transmission performance of the photonic lanterns back-to-back system. The insertion loss and the average cross talk of the whole system are lower than 5 dB and -11.3 dB, respectively. The proposed CMC provides a new method for reducing link damage in the MDM transmission system.