Wavelength dependence of stress-induced time of flight variations in graded-index multimode fibers

•We investigate the wavelength dependence of stress-induced time of flight variations.•We propose a novel measurement method for investigating the wavelength dependence.•There is no significant difference of the photo-elastic constant for SMF and MMF.

We investigate the wavelength dependence of stress-induced time of flight variations in graded-index multimode fibers (GI-MMFs) for wavelength λ = 1.26 μm ∼1.58 μm, theoretically and experimentally. Calculations were made based on simple equations using the refractive index of silica fibers. We measured the wavelength dependence of stress-induced time of flight variations by a newly proposed measurement method. We confirmed the similar wavelength dependence of GI-MMFs to that for standard single mode fibers (SSMF). However, the value of them is different. We compare the experimental and theoretical results for two types of fibers. The comparison indicates that the difference of stress-induced time of flight variations between two types of fibers is mainly due to the group velocity difference. We conclude that there is no significant difference of the photo-elastic constant between the measured SSMFs and GI-MMFs. Although many properties of GI-MMFs depended on the mode power distribution in general, we conclude the dependence of stress-induced time of flight variations on mode power distribution is small for the measured fibers.