Measurements of polarimetric sensitivity to temperature in birefringent holey fibres

We measured spectral dependence of the polarimetric sensitivity to temperature in three birefringent holey fibres with different geometries. Our results show that thermal properties of the birefringent photonic crystal fibres depend very much on the air hole arrangement. Using the procedure which allows us to determine the sign of temperature sensitivity, we demonstrated that one of the investigated fibres is insensitive to temperature at a certain wavelength. We also measured the temperature sensitivities for the fibres with and without polymer coating and showed that the coating changes significantly the fibre response to temperature. Furthermore, we demonstrated experimentally that the spectral dependence of the polarimetric sensitivity to temperature in birefringent holey fibres obeys a scaling law.