Flexible tailoring of the spectral and dispersive properties of fiber Bragg gratings using femtosecond laser pulses

Abstract

We present novel techniques for tailoring the dispersive and spectral properties of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) using ultrashort pulsed phase mask inscription. Herein, we tune the spectral and dispersive properties of FBGs by a tailored modification of the effective refractive index of selected grating regions before, during, or after the FBG inscription. Furthermore, a comparison and application of these techniques in producing nonlinearly chirped FBGs with a linearly chirped phase mask as well as a uniform phase mask will be presented. This work paves the way for a flexible and cost-effective tailoring of the spectral and dispersive properties of femtosecond inscribed FBGs.