Light coupling between two parallel CO2-laser written long-period fiber gratings

We demonstrate experimentally the light coupling effects between two parallel CO2-laser written long-period fiber gratings. For gratings written in standard single-mode fibers, the coupling efficiency depends strongly on the fiber orientation with the strongest coupling obtained when the exposed sides of the fibers face each other, while for gratings written in boron-doped fibers, the coupling efficiency is independent of the fiber orientation. We achieve a peak coupling efficiency of similar to 86% with gratings written in boron-doped fibers by using a suitable surrounding refractive index and offset distance between the two gratings. Our results suggest the possibility of realizing efficient broadband all-fiber couplers with CO2-laser written long-period fiber gratings. (C) 2007 Optical Society of America.