Longitudinally-graded optical fibers

Optical fibers have become ubiquitous tools for the creation, propagation, manipulation, and detection of light. However, while the intensity of light propagating through the fiber can increase or decrease along the length through amplification or attenuation, respectively, the properties of the fiber itself generally do not, thus removing an opportunity to further control the behavior of light and performance of fiber-based devices. Shown here are optical fibers that exhibit significant changes in their longitudinal optical properties, specifically a tailored longitudinal numerical aperture change of about 12% over less than 20 meters of length. This is about 1900 times greater than previously reported. The Brillouin gain coefficient was found to decrease by over 6 dB relative to a standard commercial single mode fiber. Next generation analogs are expected to exhibit more than a 10 dB reduction in SBS gain using larger, yet still reasonably manufacturable gradients over practical lengths. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America