Analysis of chromatic dispersion variation in optical fiber under large stretching

In the frame of a large-stroke optical fiber delay line implementation, using the ability of silica fibers to induce large and variable group delay when they are stretched, we intend to express theoretically the evolution of second-order chromatic dispersion versus fiber stretching. Both an experimental analysis and a numerical analysis are presented in this paper. The main result consists of the observation of a linear variation of the second-order chromatic dispersion versus a 0 to 32-cm group delay variation. The numerical simulation exhibits a discrepancy of 10% with respect to the experimental results. (C) 1999 Academic Press.