High Reflectivity Fiber Bragg Gratings Research Articles

A high Q-factor evanescent field fiber sensor coated with C-MWCNT for label-free HPV determination

A high Q-factor evanescent field fiber sensor is designed based on a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) coated with carboxylic multi-walled carbon nanotubes (C-MWCNT). In a high-reflectivity FBG, multiple cladding modes are stimulated as the forward-moving guided mode within the core of the multimode fiber is coupled to the FBG’s reverse-moving guided mode within the cladding. Our evanescent field fiber sensor is highly sensitive to the refractive index without altering the architecture of fiber or deviating from the conventional process of fabricating fiber gratings. The proposed sensor exhibits a full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of 78 pm and a Q-factor of 1.9 × 104 for its standard cladding-mode resonance, outperforming the majority of reported evanescent field fiber sensors in these parameters. Furthermore, by coating C-MWCNT on the fiber sensing surface, our sensor has been demonstrated to combine multiple functions into one, such as label-free determination of human papilloma virus (HPV) DNA sequences, the measurement of different concentrations, and mispairing discrimination. The sensor design put forward offers a compelling technique within the realm of optical fiber sensing for refractive index and label-free biomolecule detection.

Femtosecond laser direct writing large-area fiber Bragg grating based on diaphragm shaping

We propose and demonstrate a new method of direct writing large-area fiber Bragg grating by femtosecond laser through the coating. By adding an adjustable diaphragm before the focusing objective, we can precisely control the length of the refractive index modulation line along the femtosecond laser incident direction up to 29.1 µm. In combination with femtosecond laser scanning fabrication technology, a uniform refractive index modulation plane can be inscribed in the fiber in a single scanning. Based on the plane-by-plane inscription method, we have fabricated a high-quality high-reflectivity fiber Bragg grating and a chirped fiber Bragg grating on 20/400 double-clad fiber core. The reflectivity of both gratings is greater than 99%, and the insertion loss is as low as 0.165 dB and 0.162 dB, respectively. The thermal slope of chirped fiber Bragg grating without any refrigeration is 0.088 °C/W and there is no obvious temperature increase when using the water cooling. Therefore, the fabrication method of large-area fiber Bragg grating based on diaphragm shaping can efficiently fabricate high-quality fiber Bragg grating in the large core diameter fiber, which has an important application prospect in high-power all-fiber oscillators, especially all-fiber oscillators in special wavebands.

Cascaded All-Fiber Gas Raman Laser Oscillator in Deuterium-Filled Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fibers.

Hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (HC-PCFs) provide an ideal transmission medium and experimental platform for laser-matter interaction. Here, we report a cascaded all-fiber gas Raman laser based on deuterium (D2)-filled HC-PCFs. D2 is sealed into a gas cavity formed by a 49 m-long HC-PCF and solid-core fibers, and two homemade fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) with the Raman and pump wavelength, respectively, are further introduced. When pumped by a pulsed fiber amplifier at 1540 nm, the pure rotational stimulated Raman scattering of D2 occurs inside the cavity. The first-order Raman laser at 1645 nm can be obtained, realizing a maximum power of ~0.8 W. An all-fiber cascaded gas Raman laser oscillator is achieved by adding another 1645 nm high-reflectivity FBG at the output end of the cavity, reducing the peak power of the cascaded Raman threshold by 11.4%. The maximum cascaded Raman power of ~0.5 W is obtained when the pump source is at its maximum, and the corresponding conversion efficiency inside the cavity is 21.4%, which is 1.8 times that of the previous configuration. Moreover, the characteristics of the second-order Raman lasers at 1695 nm and 1730 nm are also studied thoroughly. This work provides a significant method for realizing all-fiber cascaded gas Raman lasers, which is beneficial for expanding the output wavelength of fiber gas lasers with a good stability and compactivity.

High-efficiency continuous-wave Tm-doped fiber laser with a single fiber Bragg grating at 1942 nm

We report a continuous-wave Tm-doped fiber (TDF) laser with a single fiber Bragg grating (FBG). The Fresnel effect presenting in the passive fiber end-face and high-reflectivity FBG established the resonator. The peak wavelength of the laser was 1942.25 nm with a spectral linewidth of 194 pm. The maximum output power was 37.5 W, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 63.7% with a beam quality factor of M 2 ∼ 1.51. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest slope efficiency of a TDF laser pumped by 793 nm laser diode.

Antiresonant hollow-core fiber Bragg grating design.

Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) inscribed in hollow-core fibers hold a potential to revolutionize the field of gas photonics by enhancing the performance and versatility of hollow-core fiber-based matter cells. By effectively transforming these cells into cavities, FBGs can significantly extend the effective length of light-matter interactions. Traditional FBG inscription methods cannot be extended to hollow-core fibers, because light in the fundamental mode is predominantly confined to the hollow region where an index change cannot be induced. In this Letter, we propose a bi-thickness dual-ring hollow-core antiresonant fiber (DRHCF) design that achieves substantial overlap between the fundamental mode and cladding glass in a well-controlled manner, ensuring a strong FBG response with a minimal insertion loss. Through detailed numerical investigations, we demonstrate the feasibility of creating a high reflection FBG in the DRHCF using standard FBG inscription techniques. The proposed device is expected to have a length of <1 cm and the insertion loss of <0.3 dB, including splice loss.

Dual-HR-FBG based single-frequency fiber laser at 1030 nm

We demonstrate a single-frequency fiber laser operating at 1030 nm with a distributed Bragg reflector cavity consisting of two high-reflectivity fiber Bragg gratings (HR-FBGs). By proper thermal adjustment, the gain bandwidth of the fiber laser is significantly compressed through the spectral overlap near the edges of the reflection band of two HR-FBGs, and the single-longitudinal-mode lasing is achieved. The effective cavity length of the fiber laser with the proposed cavity configuration is calculated, and its variation with the temperature difference between two HR-FBGs is also verified through the observation of the relaxation oscillation frequency shift. The measured laser linewidth is about 4.45 kHz at a temperature difference of 48.2 °C. The single-frequency output power of 14.4 mW is achieved at a pump power of 540 mW.

Femtosecond laser inscribed fiber Bragg gratings based on precise spatial apodization.

Plane-by-plane femtosecond laser fabricated apodized fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) are demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The method reported in this work provides a fully customizable and controlled inscription that can realize any desired apodized profile. By using this flexibility, we experimentally demonstrate four different apodization profiles (Gaussian, Hamming, New, Nuttall). These profiles were chosen to evaluate their performance with regard to the sidelobe suppression ratio (SLSR). Usually, a higher reflectivity of a grating fabricated with a femtosecond laser will result in a greater difficulty to achieve a controlled apodization profile due to the nature of the material modification. Therefore, the goal of this work is to fabricate high-reflectivity FBGs without sacrificing the SLSR and provide a direct comparison with apodized low-reflectivity FBGs. In our weak apodized FBGs, we also consider the background noise introduced during the femtosecond (fs)-laser inscription process which is fundamental when multiplexing FBGs within a narrow wavelength window.

A Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor Based on Cladding Mode Resonance for Label-Free Biosensing

A fiber-optic biosensing platform based on ultra-narrowband cladding mode resonances was developed on a high-reflectivity fiber Bragg grating (FBG) for targeting biomolecular detection. The multiple cladding modes with a high sensitivity to the refractive index (RI) were excited in the FBG by coupling between the forward-propagating guided core mode of the multimode fiber and the backward-propagating guided cladding mode of the FBG without any damage to the fiber structure or any change to the standard FBG manufacturing process. The full width at half maximum and the Q-factor of the typical cladding mode resonance operation of the proposed sensor are 80 pm and 19,270, respectively, which are better than those of most fiber-optic biosensors reported to date. In addition, the FBG sensor demonstrated a high sensitivity in protein detection and a high selectivity in serum sample assays. The sensitivity of this sensor was further increased simply by coating it with graphene oxide (GO) sheets on the sensing surface without using a signal amplification strategy. Furthermore, an ultra-low limit of detection (LOD) of 32 pM was obtained by the GO-coated FBG sensor for IgG detection. The proposed FBG sensor provides a competitive fiber-optic platform for biomolecular detection. It has a great potential for applications in label-free biosensing.

High-temperature linearly polarized single-frequency fiber lasers based on a non-polarization-maintaining FBG preparation through a femtosecond laser

A high-temperature-resistant linearly polarized single-frequency distributed Bragg reflector fiber laser is demonstrated by using a femtosecond laser and directly fabricating a pair of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) into an erbium-doped fiber (EDF). A high-reflection FBG with high birefringence prepared by femtosecond laser overexposure is used as a polarization selector. The integrated resonator cavity is 0.82 cm to ensure single-frequency operation. After annealing treatment, the laser can work stably at 600°C, and no mode hopping happens at different temperatures. By using the residual pump light and a suitable EDF to amplify the laser, a narrow linewidth laser with an output power of 26.3 mW, a degree of polarization reaching 0.984, and a linewidth less than 4 kHz is obtained.

Femtosecond Laser Fabricated Apodized Fiber Bragg Gratings Based on Energy Regulation

In this paper, an energy regulation method based on the combination of a half-wave plate (HWP) and a polarization beam splitter (PBS) is proposed for the fabrication of apodized fiber gratings, which can effectively improve the side lobe suppression ratio of high-reflectivity fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) fabricated by femtosecond laser. The apodized FBGs prepared by this method has good repeatability and flexibility. By inputting different types of apodization functions through the program, the rotation speed of the stepping motor can be adjusted synchronously, and then the position of the HWP can be accurately controlled so that the laser energy can be distributed as an apodization function along the axial direction of the fiber. By using the energy apodization method, the gratings with a reflectivity of 75% and a side lobe suppression ratio of 25 and 32 dB are fabricated in the fiber with a core diameter of 9 and 4.4 μm, respectively. The temperature and strain sensitivities of the energy-apodized fiber gratings with a core diameter of 4.4 μm are 10.36 pm/°C and 0.9 pm/με, respectively. The high-reflectivity gratings fabricated by this energy apodization method are expected to be used in high-power narrow-linewidth lasers and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems.

Femtosecond Laser Plane-by-Plane Inscribed Cavity Mirrors for Monolithic Fiber Lasers in Thulium-Doped Fiber.

A monolithic fiber laser operating in the short wavelength infrared that is suitable for CO2 gas sensing applications is proposed and presented. The current study reports a laser design based on the direct inscription of a monolithic Fabry–Perot (FP) cavity in a thulium-doped optical fiber using the femtosecond laser (FsL) plane-by-plane inscription method to produce the cavity mirrors. The FP cavity was inscribed directly into the active fiber using two wavelength-identical fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), one with high and one with low reflectivity. Initially the effective length of the fiber was defined using a single high reflectivity FBG and subsequently a very weak FBG was inscribed at the other end of the fiber in order to demonstrate a fully monolithic fiber laser. All fiber lasers were designed for continuous wave operation at 1950 nm and characterized with respect to the power output, slope efficiency, stability, and effective resonator length. The performance of the presented monolithic laser cavities was evaluated using the same active fiber as a reference fiber spliced to FBGs inscribed in passive fiber; an improvement exceeding 12% slope efficiency is reported for the presented monolithic laser.

Realization of in Situ Fiber-Core Temperature Measurement in a Kilowatt-Level Fiber Laser Oscillator: Design and Optimization of the Method Based on OFDR

High-power fiber lasers have been widely used in various industrial manufacturing and military defense applications. During the development of fiber lasers in the past decades, the thermal effect has always been one of the biggest obstacles. It is crucial to study the temperature characteristics and overcome the thermal restrictions for a better output performance. With the systematic design and optimization in this article, optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) can achieve in situ distributed temperature measurement of the fiber core in high-power fiber lasers. This allows a better study of the temperature characteristics and thermal effects. The fiber-core distributed temperature of a kilowatt-level fiber oscillator is first demonstrated based on this method here. The splicing point between the high reflectivity fiber Bragg grating (HR-FBG) and gain fiber withstands the highest temperature, reaching 101.6 °C at a 1.47 kW output. In addition, the temperature of the gain fiber gradually decreases from 92 °C to 30 °C along the pumping direction. The internal temperatures of the combiner and HR-FBG are also measured to evaluate their performances in the high-power regime. The temperature distributions in the experiment agree well with the theoretical simulation.

Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) Sensors in a High-Scattering Optical Fiber Doped with MgO Nanoparticles for Polarization-Dependent Temperature Sensing

The characterization of Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors on a high-scattering fiber, having the core doped with MgO nanoparticles for polarization-dependent temperature sensing is reported. The fiber has a scattering level 37.2 dB higher than a single-mode fiber. FBGs have been inscribed by mean of a near-infrared femtosecond laser and a phase mask, with Bragg wavelength around 1552 nm. The characterization shows a thermal sensitivity of 11.45 pm/°C. A polarization-selective thermal behavior has been obtained, with sensitivity of 11.53 pm/°C for the perpendicular polarization (S) and 11.08 pm/°C for the parallel polarization (P), thus having 4.0% different sensitivity between the two polarizations. The results show the inscription of high-reflectivity FBGs onto a fiber core doped with nanoparticles, with the possibility of having reflectors into a fiber with tailored Rayleigh scattering properties.

Quasi-kilowatt random fiber laser

The random distributed-feedback Raman fiber laser (RRFL) is a new approach to obtain a high-power laser. In this Letter, we report a RRFL with quasi-kilowatt output power for the first time based on a half-open cavity. It consists of a piece of a large-mode-area passive fiber with a core diameter of 20 μm and a high-reflectivity fiber Bragg grating (FBG). By optimizing the fiber length to be 90 m, a 919 W random laser at 1150 nm is achieved in the forward output end. Due to the nonlinear Kerr-effect-induced spectral broadening, the spectrum of the generated random laser exceeds the bandwidth of the FBG, resulting in a 66 W random laser emitting from the backward direction at the maximum power. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first quasi-kilowatt random fiber laser, and it is also the highest power reported of a 1150 nm laser. This work provides a rather simple structure to obtain a kilowatt-level, stable random laser output.

4.05 kW monolithic fiber laser oscillator based on home-made large mode area fiber Bragg gratings

With the increasing output power of the monolithic fiber laser oscillators, the stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) effect becomes one of the main limitations of power scaling. Employing fiber with a larger mode area is an effective technique to mitigate the SRS, but, for the monolithic fiber laser oscillators, the difficulty of the inscription of the high-reflection fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) increases with the fiber mode area. In this work, we demonstrated a high-power monolithic fiber laser oscillator based on the home-made large mode area FBGs and ytterbium-doped fiber (YDF) with 25 μm core diameters. A maximum output power of 4.05 kW is achieved at the central wavelength of ∼1080 nm with a total 915 nm pump power of ∼6.7 kW. At the operation of 4.05 kW, the intensity of the Raman Stokes light is ∼25 dB below the signal laser, and the beam quality (M2-factor) is ∼2.2. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first detailed report of the monolithic fiber laser oscillator with an output power beyond 4 kW.

Common-cavity ytterbium/Raman random distributed feedback fiber laser

In this letter, a common-cavity random distributed feedback fiber laser which can generate both 1064 nm ytterbium-doped random lasing and 1115 nm ytterbium-Raman random lasing is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for the first time. The common cavity is based on the combination of the double-cladding ytterbium-doped fiber and the standard single mode fiber (SMF); a 1064 nm high-reflectivity fiber Bragg grating and the fiber flat-end are connected to the signal port of the pump combiner as the point reflectors. The generated 1064 nm random lasing can serve as the Raman pump in the SMF, thus 1115 nm random lasing could be stimulated with the hybrid ytterbium-Raman gain. The feedback for 1115 nm random lasing is the combination of flat-end fiber and random Rayleigh feedback. By controlling the value of flat-end fiber’s reflectivity to 0.002, stable 1.91 W of 1064 nm ytterbium-doped random lasing and 3.72 W of 1115 nm ytterbium-Raman random lasing are generated successively. This work could provide a simple and cost-effective way to generate high-power random lasing.

Incoherently pumped high-power linearly-polarized single-mode random fiber laser: experimental investigations and theoretical prospects.

We present a hundred-watt-level linearly-polarized random fiber laser (RFL) pumped by incoherent broadband amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source and prospect the power scaling potential theoretically. The RFL employs half-opened cavity structure which is composed by a section of 330 m polarization maintained (PM) passive fiber and two PM high reflectivity fiber Bragg gratings. The 2nd order Stokes light centered at 1178 nm reaches the pump limited maximal power of 100.7 W with a full width at half-maximum linewidth of 2.58 nm and polarization extinction ratio of 23.5 dB. The corresponding ultimate quantum efficiency of pump to 2nd order Stokes light is 86.43%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of linearly-polarized high-order RFL with hundred-watt output power. Furthermore, the theoretical investigation indicates that 300 W-level linearly-polarized single-mode 1st order Stokes light can be obtained from incoherently pumped RFL with 100 m PM passive fiber.

Compact non-cascaded all-fiber Raman laser operating at 1174 nm

We investigate a non-cascaded, all-fiber, single-mode Raman fiber laser (RFL) operating at 1174 nm with an optical slope efficiency of 68%. An ~1-km commercial single-mode fiber is used as the Raman gain medium. The RFL cavity is formed between a high reflectivity fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and a perpendicularly-cleaved fiber facet. The laser is pumped by using a homemade ytterbium-doped fiber laser (YDFL) and can be frequency doubled to generate yellow light. Under the optimum condition, A 6.9-W 1174-nm laser is obtained at maximum available power (24 W) of a laser diode pump. The optical conversion efficiency and the net slope efficiency of the RFL were respectively, 29% and 38%, with respect to launched diode laser power. We also demonstrate yellow-light generation by frequency doubling of the RFL.

An expandable crosstalk reduction method for inline fiber Fabry–Pérot sensor array based on fiber Bragg gratings

The inline time division multiplexing (TDM) fiber Fabry–Pérot (FFP) sensor array based on fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) is attractive for many applications. But the intrinsic multi-reflection (MR) induced crosstalk limits applications especially those needing high resolution. In this paper we proposed an expandable method for MR-induced crosstalk reduction. The method is based on complexing-exponent synthesis using the phase-generated carrier (PGC) scheme and the special common character of the impulse responses. The method could promote demodulation stability simultaneously with the reduction of MR-induced crosstalk. A polarization-maintaining 3-TDM experimental system with an FBG reflectivity of about 5 was set up to validate the method. The experimental results showed that crosstalk reduction of 13 dB and 15 dB was achieved for sensor 2 and sensor 3 respectively when a signal was applied to the first sensor and crosstalk reduction of 8 dB was achieved for sensor 3 when a signal was applied to sensor 2. The demodulation stability of the applied signal was promoted as well. The standard deviations of the amplitude distributions of the demodulated signals were reduced from 0.0046 to 0.0021 for sensor 2 and from 0.0114 to 0.0044 for sensor 3. Because of the convenience of the linear operation of the complexing-exponent and according to the common character of the impulse response we found, the method can be effectively extended to the array with more TDM channels if the impulse response of the inline FFP sensor array with more TDM channels is derived. It offers potential to develop a low-crosstalk inline FFP sensor array using the PGC interrogation technique with relatively high reflectivity FBGs which can guarantee enough light power received by the photo-detector.

Continuous Liquid-Level Sensor Based on a Long-Period Grating and Microwave Photonics Filtering Techniques

A fiber optic liquid-level sensor based on a long period grating (LPG) is proposed and experimentally validated. The principle of operation is based on a technique used to analyze microwave photonics filters. A 4-cm-long LPG cascaded with a high-reflectivity fiber Bragg grating is employed to achieve a continuous liquid-level sensor. The measurements have been performed using a modulator and a photo-detector with a modest bandwidth of less than 500 MHz, showing a sensitivity of −12.71 dB/cm and a standard deviation of 0.52 dB. One of the significant advantages of such sensing structure is that it is based on low-bandwidth radio frequency and off-the-shelf photonic components. In addition, the simple proposed scheme presents good repeatable performance and proves to be intrinsically robust against environmental changes, stable, and easy to reconfigure.