Tunable dispersion compensation with fixed center wavelength and bandwidth using a side-polished linearly chirped fiber Bragg grating

We propose a new method for tuning the dispersion of a linearly chirped fiber Bragg grating with fixed center wavelength and bandwidth. We polished one side of the grating and attached it to a cantilever metal beam. By contacting an index matching block to the polished face of the grating, we could shorten the effective grating length through which light can propagate in the core of fiber. Decrease of grating length results in reflection bandwidth narrowing. However, by bending the grating attached on the cantilever beam, we could restore the bandwidth. Because the grating is shortened without bandwidth narrowing, the amount of dispersion is decreased. By using this method, we tuned chromatic dispersion of the linearly chirped fiber Bragg grating from −687.24 to −256.11ps/nm for 0.75 nm fixed bandwidth without center wavelength shift.