Abstract
In this paper a digital holographic phase shifting interferometric method is used to characterize the graded index (GR-IN) optical fibers. Off-axis digital holographic Mach-Zehnder like arrangement in aid of phase shifting tool is applied. Numerical reconstruction of phase shifted holograms is applied to calculate the optical phase difference distribution in the image plane, and then the optical phase differences across GR-IN fibers are extracted considering image enhancement and noise reduction steps. Also, a simple algorithm is presented to modify the position of the extracted optical phase differences across the fibers to be perpendicular to x-axis, so that it becomes easy to calculate the mean optical phase differences along the fiber. The mean optical phase differences in combination with multilayer model are applied to calculate the refractive index profiles across GR-IN optical fibers. An analytical model is presented to predict the mode distribution associated with the effective indices and the propagation coefficient of the parabolic refractive index profile GR-IN fiber. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.