Optical interleaver based on nested multiple knot microfiber resonators

A novel design of nested optical fiber based multiple knot resonators is presented. The design consists of three knot resonators, two of which share a significant fraction of their optical path. The relationship between the knots' diameter ratio and the transmission spectrum is investigated. The output spectrum is theoretically analyzed using transfer matrix analysis and the calculated results exhibit good agreement with experimental results. The free spectral range (FSR) is varied by simply fine-tuning the diameter of the small knot. The periodic spectrum of this optical microfiber based photonic device has a number of applications in the sensing and communications field, e.g., optical interleavers, frequency combs, filters, and fiber lasers. This Letter demonstrates that the variation of the output spectrum can be implemented simply by changing the knot sizes and coupling coefficients.