Design of tunable metal-coated long-period fiber grating filter with dispersion consideration

The design of a tunable metal-coated long-period fiber grating (LPFG) filter based on the material dispersion consideration is presented. The tuning of the resonant wavelength can be achieved by heating the metal layer. Based on the coupled mode theory, the influences of the material dispersion on the transmission spectrum of the metal-coated LPFG are studied. There is a special grating period for a specific cladding mode; when the grating period is less than or equal to the special grating period, the material dispersion has weak influence on the resonant wavelength. Under such condition, the attenuation band depth corresponding to the specific cladding mode has excellent stability while the temperature changes, thus improving the filtering performances of the tunable loss filter. Further, experimental results demonstrate the validity and feasibility of the proposed tunable filter.