Abstract
Localized heating with a flame is shown to be a simple and effective method for substantially augmenting the photosensitivity of high-silica optical waveguides to (UV) light. The method increases the photosensitivity of standard (Ge-doped core) telecommunications fiber by a factor greater than 10 (photoinduced ΔnUV > 10−3) and renders strongly photosensitive the cores of high-quality Ge:SiO2-on-Si and Ge:SiO2-on-SiO2 planar waveguides that were negligibly photosensitive before treatment. We have written large-modulation-depth Bragg gratings, in both fiber and planar optical waveguides photosensitized by our method, using KrF (249-nm) radiation incident upon the waveguides through a zero-order-nulled phase mask. It is noteworthy that photosensitization by our method is achieved with a negligible increase in loss at the three principal optical communication windows.
© 1993 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Kelly D. Simmons, George I. Stegeman, Barrett G. Potter, and Joseph H. Simmons
Opt. Lett. 18(1) 25-27 (1993)
J. Albert, B. Malo, F. Bilodeau, D. C. Johnson, K. O. Hill, Y. Hibino, and M. Kawachi
Opt. Lett. 19(6) 387-389 (1994)
Takashi Saito, Tadahiko Hanada, Naoki Kitamura, and Mitsuhiro Kitamura
Appl. Opt. 37(12) 2242-2244 (1998)