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In this paper we demonstrate a high wall-plug efficiency and low threshold current for heterogeneously integrated III-V-on-Silicon distributed feedback (DFB) lasers. Above 12% wall plug efficiency is achieved for a 200 µm long DFB laser diode at 25 °C. Up to two times 6 mW of optical power is coupled into the silicon waveguide and more than 40 dB side-mode suppression ratio is obtained. We also discuss the non-return-to-zero on-off keying modulation at 20 Gb/s and the transmission over a 2 km long optical fiber.

This paper presents the development of an intelligent soft-sensor system to add haptic perception to the underactuated hand prosthesis PrHand. Two sensors based on optical fiber were constructed, one for finger joint angles and the other for fingertips’ contact force. Three sensor fabrications were tested for the angle sensor by axially rotating the sensors in four positions. The configuration with the most similar response in the four rotations was chosen. The chosen sensors presented a polynomial response with R2 higher than 92%. The tactile force sensors tracked the force made over the objects. Almost all sensors presented a polynomial response with R2 higher than 94%. The system monitored the prosthesis activity by recognizing grasp types. Six machine learning algorithms were tested: linear regression, k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, decision tree, k-means clustering, and hierarchical clustering. To validate the algorithms, a k-fold test was used with a k = 10, and the accuracy result for k-nearest neighbor was 98.5%, while that for decision tree was 93.3%, enabling the classification of the eight grip types.

(1) Background: The IVIscan is a commercially available scintillating fiber detector designed for quality assurance and in vivo dosimetry in computed tomography (CT). In this work, we investigated the performance of the IVIscan scintillator and associated method in a wide range of beam width from three CT manufacturers and compared it to a CT chamber designed for Computed Tomography Dose Index (CTDI) measurements. (2) Methods: We measured weighted CTDI (CTDIw) with each detector in accordance with the requirements of regulatory tests and international recommendations for the minimum, maximum and the most used beam width in clinic and investigated the accuracy of the IVIscan system based on the assessment of the CTDIw deviation from the CT chamber. We also investigated the IVIscan accuracy for the whole range of the CT scans kV. (3) Results: We found excellent agreement between the IVIscan scintillator and the CT chamber for the whole range of beam widths and kV, especially for wide beams used on recent technology of CT scans. (4) Conclusions: These findings highlight that the IVIscan scintillator is a relevant detector for CT radiation dose assessments, and the method associated with calculating the CTDIw saves a significant amount of time and effort when performing tests, especially with regard to new CT technologies.

Optical fiber interferometric magnetic field sensors based on magnetostrictive effects have several advantages, e.g., high sensitivity, strong adaptability to harsh environments, long distance transmission, etc. They also have great application prospects in deep wells, oceans, and other extreme environments. In this paper, two optical fiber magnetic field sensors based on iron-based amorphous nanocrystalline ribbons and a passive 3 × 3 coupler demodulation system were proposed and experimentally tested. The sensor structure and the equal-arm Mach–Zehnder fiber interferometer were designed, and the experimental results showed that the magnetic field resolutions of the optical fiber magnetic field sensors with sensing length of 0.25 m and 1 m were 15.4 nT/√Hz @ 10 Hz and 4.2 nT/√Hz @ 10 Hz, respectively. This confirmed the sensitivity multiplication relationship between the two sensors and the feasibility of improving the magnetic field resolution to the pT level by increasing the sensing length.

In this paper, we demonstrate that multiple tapers in optical fibers allow for quasi-distributed refractive index sensing via a high spatial resolution Brillouin Optical Frequency-Domain Analysis (BOFDA) configuration. We first characterize, theoretically and experimentally, the variation of the Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) with the diameter of the tapered fiber. Then, we characterize the dependence of the BFS from the outer refractive index in an optical fiber taper with a waist diameter of 10 micron. Finally, we show that more tapers can be realized along the same fiber, in order to provide multi-point refractive index sensing.

Low-noise optical amplification has been a long-lasting research topic in various fields including communication, metrology and quantum optics. Here we report optical signal processing at different wavelengths enabled by a low-noise optical phase-sensitive amplifier (PSA) using a single compact integrated silicon nitride photonic waveguide. For 10 Gbit/s non-return-to-zero optical signals with central wavelengths tuned in the telecommunication band, the waveguide-based PSA exhibits a gain of more than 10 dB and a noise figure of about 1.2 dB when the coupling losses are neglected. For a bit-error-rate level of 10-9, penalties of less than 0.8 dB for all channels are observed after the signals propagation through the chip-based PSA, which may be due to the distortions in the few-mode waveguide. These experimental results generally agree with theoretical prediction and indicate that silicon-nitride-based PSAs are promising for the next generation of broadband optical signal processing and communication systems

We analyze the potential suitability or strength of arguments for the application of multicore optical fibers in high capacity submarine cable systems via transmission and techno-economic modeling. We consider hypothetical multicore fibers (MCFs) with 2-4 weakly coupled cores and compare capacity and cost/bit against conventional single-core fibers (SCFs). The analysis is performed in the context of a trans-Atlantic link length system and we evaluate the relative fiber performance with three different, but related, system design approaches. Two SCF coating diameters are assessed in terms of how this parameter affects the cost/bit through fiber density in submarine cables and resulting cable cost. We find that MCFs may enable higher cable capacity when fiber pair limits are imposed, but likely not at lower cost/bit unless optimistic and best case assumptions are made with respect to MCF relative fiber cost. We also find that reduced diameter SCFs can deliver much of the density and cable cost savings that motivates interest in MCF without the challenges of a new eco-system as required by MCF. However, MCF may enable the design of the largest cable capacities such as 1 Pb/s or more that might not be attainable with SCFs without significant cable changes.

We report a large submillimeter high-speed arrayed photodetector (PD) with a single-output design for high optical-alignment robustness free-space optical (FSO) communications. To realize a large photodetective area with a single-output design of over 10 Gbps, 8 × 8 multi-pixel PDs were designed and fabricated in a series–and-parallel network. To avoid sacrificing the frequency response, we successfully developed a large photodetective area PD, as large as 0.4 mm × 0.4 mm, with the same frequency response (8.5 GHz) as that in a small single PD (40-μm diameter worth). With the photodetector design and its characteristics, a high data-rate FSO demonstration of up to 25 Gbps for 10-m FSO communications was presented.

11 pags., 8 figs., Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) delivers real-time observation ofphysical perturbations such as vibrations or strain variations in conventional optical fibers with high sensitivity. The high density of sensing points and large network footprint provided by a single DAS system, along with the availability of a vast optical fiber network already deployed both in land and in oceanic regions, contrast with the high deployment and maintenance cost of conventional instrumentation networks for seismology. This situation has triggered a rapid growth of DAS deployments for seismic monitoring in recent years. Photonic engineers and geophysicists have joined efforts to prove the value of optical fibers as distributed seismometers, which has resulted in a wide panoply of tests demonstrating diverse applicability across the geosciences. For example, DAS has been successfully applied recording local to teleseismic earthquakes, monitoring glacial icequakes, and observing oceanographic phenomena at the sea floor. Most of the realized tests have been performed using commercially available optical fiber interrogators based on phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry. Among them, DAS based on chirped pulse distributed acoustic sensing have provided optimized performance in terms of both range and sensitivity, particularly at low frequencies. In this communication, we provide a comprehensive review of the current situation of DAS for seismology applications, focusing on near surface monitoring, where already deployed optical fibers can be repurposed as sensor networks., Z.Z. acknowledges support from the Moore Foundation and NSF under CAREER Award 1848166.

Funding Information: This work was supported by the Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS- CXTD-202001), Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (Z181100004818003, Z201100008720006, and Z191100000819003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52025023, 51991342, 52021006, and 11888101), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB33000000), the Key R&D Program of Guangdong Province (2020B010189001, 2019B010931001, and 2018B030327001), Pearl River Talent Recruitment Program of Guangdong Province (2019ZT08C321), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (JQ19004), Zhongyuan Thousand Talents Program of Henan Province, and National Top-notch Young Talents of Ten Thousand Talents Program. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 American Chemical Society. The graphene photonic crystal fiber (Gr-PCF), with graphene coated onto the inner hole walls of the fiber, has shown its superiority in various photonic and optoelectronic applications ranging from electro-optic modulators to environmental sensors. However, these applications mainly utilize the linear optical properties of graphene, and its potentials in the nonlinear optical regime are still waiting to be explored. As for the nonlinear applications, the structure and property of Gr-PCF must be precisely manipulated for the tradeoff between nonlinear enhancement and linear absorption loss of graphene. Here, we propose a pressure-controllable chemical vapor deposition strategy to precisely control the uniform fiber length and graphene thickness, realizing the strong and tunable optical nonlinearity of Gr-PCF with acceptable optical loss. Based on the as-fabricated fiber, the nonlinear harmonic generations exhibit nearly one order of magnitude enhancement compared with those of graphene on planar quartz. Moreover, an ultrafast all-fiber laser employing the nonlinear Gr-PCF as a saturable absorber is demonstrated with ∼8 mW output power, ∼2 ps pulse width, and ∼37 MHz repetition frequency. Our results can technically open up an infusive way to precisely engineer the nonlinear properties of graphene optical fibers and broaden their applications in all-fiber photonic and optoelectronic devices.

A photonic-based technique for the generation of highly-linear ultra-wideband stepped-frequency microwave signals with large time-bandwidth product is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The double-gated recirculating frequency-shifting optical fiber loop enables the frequency of the generated microwave signal to hop step-wisely at exact increment. The generation of signals with up to 20 GHz bandwidth and ~ 300 s temporal duration, corresponding to a time-bandwidth product of 6,000,000, is achieved by the proof-of-concept system with electronics of only up to 80 MHz bandwidth. Nonlinearity of less than 10-7 and high intra- and inter-period coherence are also experimentally validated. This work provides applications such as high resolution radar with a promising low-cost solution for generating large time-bandwidth product waveforms with frequency scalability and extreme linearity.

Backscattering noise is a key factor to restrict the performance of resonant fiber optic gyroscopes(RFOG). In order to improve the accuracy of RFOG, this paper proposes a scheme with heterodyne optical phase-locked loop(HOPLL) technique based on acousto-optic modulation(AOM) to suppress backscattering noise. In this scheme, the main light source is divided into three output lights, two of which are frequency-shifted by the AOM, and then they are phase-locked with the third light, using the HOPLL technique. The two channels of frequency-shifted light are respectively used as the clockwise (CW) and counterclockwise(CCW) light of the RFOG, and are locked on the resonance peak. The transmissive fiber resonator can be regarded as a band-pass filter. By adjusting the reference signal in the HOPLL, the carrier of the two frequency-shifted lights can be moved away from the resonance peak. The carrier light intensity of the frequency-shifted light is suppressed by the cavity itself. The suppression ratio(SPR) reaches 15.83dB. The experimental results illustrate that the bias stability of RFOG is 3.8/h based on the Allan deviation, strongly proving the effectiveness of this scheme in suppressing backscattering noise in practical applications.

This paper presents a remote beamforming scheme with fixed wavelength allocation for radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems employing single-mode fiber (SMF). In the proposed scheme, wavelengths with equal narrow spacing are fixedly assigned to each antenna element to equalize the time delay differences between adjacent wavelengths caused by chromatic dispersion. The beam direction of base station (BS) is controlled only by phase control at central station (CS). This offers efficient wavelength utilization and completely remote beam control without information of optical fiber length, and supports systems employing high carrier frequency and long optical fiber. The beamforming performance of the scheme is evaluated theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that the beam pattern depends on optical intensity modulation frequency instead of radiated frequency. Simulations indicate that the required wavelength spacing to obtain a desired beam pattern becomes narrower as more wavelengths are used or intensity modulation frequency becomes higher. Finally, to evaluate the feasibility of the scheme, experiments are conducted under the condition of intensity modulation frequency of 10 GHz, 10 km SMF, and four element array antenna. The results substantially agree with the simulation results, and the main lobe level decrease is within 0.04 dB at wavelength spacing of 50-400 GHz (0.39-3.13 nm on average in C band). The results confirm that the scheme can achieve almost ideal beam patterns and realize beamforming and beamscanning.

Optical frequency domain reflectometry measurements in internally clad single crystal sapphire fiber have received attention in recent years due to their high temperature distributed sensing potential. As work with these fibers has proceeded, there have been some inconsistencies in the results. Deeper investigation and testing has identified two critical considerations for the proper functioning of these fibers. First, users must address the propagation of multimode light along the outer surface of the fiber. By observing the far-field image of an internally clad sapphire fiber when adding index matching fluid to the outer fiber surface, we demonstrate the effects of removing the higher order modes from these fibers. The addition of index matching fluid resulted in nearly single mode performance where multimode performance was previously observed. Second, users must address the effect that coupling the fiber to the interrogator via silica based fiber has on the internally clad sapphire fibers performance. Direct fusion splicing of silica to sapphire, as has been used in the recent work with these fibers, has a mode filtering effect which can be beneficial towards the modal behavior of the fibers. However, in this paper we demonstrate that the splicing can cause a sensing failure due to little or no low order mode light, that is useful for sensing, returning to the detector. The positive results from recent years have demonstrated that optical frequency domain reflectometry sensing performance will be successful in clad sapphire fiber; but only when the considerations described herein are addressed properly.

The power coupling between two light diffusing multimodal optical fibers of equal and finite lengths that are parallel oriented, and which are coupled through scattering processes, is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. In particular, a simple analytical model of the inherent coupling coefficient, derived according to a perturbation approach in a weak-coupling regime, is developed. The modelling results have been compared with the measurements performed, as a function of fiber distance and coupling length at three different wavelengths, and a close agreement is proved. The obtained results provide better understanding of the power coupling mechanism and of the inherent functional dependence on the main structural parameters of the two-fiber configuration.

An analytical approach about the general type of step-index optical fiber modes and their variations is presented in this paper. The theoretical model is solved through our analytical method. With the boundary conditions, a composite equation set is established and solved. The precise results of all modes are achieved with a high-precision numerical solution. The modal characteristic contains the distributions of electromagnetic fields, the effective refractive index, and its tendencies. The modal sensitivity is based on the former and the partial derivative of the effective refractive index (neff/ni and neff/ri). The derivative rule of implicit functions and determinant function allows our method to analyze the sensitivity of modes. Furthermore, four qualitative deductions are derived during the process, including the qualitative analysis of modes and their constraints, supporting previous experiments. Our work is beneficial for exploiting new fiber and researching relative fiber sensors.

In this paper, an environment-robust polarization-based phase-shift dynamic demodulation method for optical fiber acoustic sensor is proposed. Through optical lever effect of polarization low-coherence interference and amplitude scaling differential cross multiplication (AS-DCM) algorithm, acoustic-source induced interference phase of the acoustic sensor can be demodulated in real-time with high precision. The maximum relative phase demodulation error was only 0.694% when the cavity length had an offset ∼4 μm. The maximum cavity length demodulation error was keeping less than 3.988 nm under the optical power reduced ten times, which demonstrated an ultra-stable demodulation for the largest permitted optical power attenuation range, to our best knowledge. The proposed method has a capability of tolerating large optical power attenuation and large cavity length random offset, providing an environment-robust way for optical fiber acoustic sensor working in extreme environments.

The use of in-fiber core-to-cladding coupling components for thermal heating purposes has been well assessed in the last decades within the development of fiber optic devices for flow measurements and water thermal conductivity calculation. In these devices, light travelling in the fiber core is transferred into the cladding and absorbed by a metallic layer surrounding the fiber, with the consequent resistive heating generation. Here we demonstrate for the first time the use of a Turn-Around-Point (TAP) Long Period Grating (LPG) as resonant core-to-cladding light coupling mechanism for the fabrication of a highly efficient heating device based on metallic coated Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG). A properly designed TAP LPG was fabricated by means of point-to-point UV laser and spliced to a 150 nm thick Au-coated FBG. The heating efficiency characterizations of the final device were analyzed, in both air and water, by evaluating the temperature increase in the gold layer surrounding the FBG at incremental values of the injected power. Collected results confirm that the use of LPGs involving the excitation of higher order cladding modes provides an excellent transferring mechanism of the fiber core light into the cladding, which in turn guarantees very high thermal heating efficiency to the final device. Moreover, by comparing such results with the performance of other in-fiber core-to-cladding coupling components already presented in literature, it was found that the TAP LPG-based device exhibits an actuation efficiency 2.5 times greater, thus resulting the most effective and highly performing solution for energy transfer to the metallic overcoat.

In this work, a high-resolution, self-heterodyne,RF measurement of a broad-area laser is spatially resolved using an optical fiber at a range of power levels. Three separate spatial regimes of operation are revealed as power is increased: conventional modes, spatial coherence collapse, and cavity-assisted filamentation.

Compensating for the effects of temperature is a crucial issue in structural health monitoring when using optical fiber sensors. This study focused on the change in sensitivity due to differences in GeO2 and B2O3 doping and then verified the accuracy when measuring the strain and temperature distributions simultaneously. Four types of optical fiber sensors were utilized to measure the strain and temperature in four-point bending tests, and the best combination of the sensors resulted in strain and temperature errors of 28.4 μϵ and 1.52 °C, respectively. Based on the results obtained from the four-point bending tests, we discussed the error factors via an error propagation analysis. The results of the error propagation analysis agreed well with the experimental results, thus indicating the effectiveness of the analysis as a method for verifying accuracy and error factors.

We report the experimental demonstration of efficient second-harmonic generation by splicing optically poled fiber segments. A device made from five segments each 20 cm-long exhibits, at a fundamental average power of 4.2 mW, a maximum increase of 5.5 in the conversion efficiency with respect to a single 20 cm poled fiber, corresponding to a conversion efficiency of 5.4%. For any considered fundamental power, the conversion efficiency at the output of a five-segment device is larger than the efficiency of a single poled fiber having the same length.

The paper reports a machine learning approach for estimating the phase in a distributed acoustic sensor implemented using optical frequency domain reflectometry, with enhanced robustness at the fading points. A neural network configuration was trained using a simulated set of optical signals that were modeled after the Rayleigh scattering pattern of a perturbed fiber. Firstly, the performance of the network was verified using another set of numerically generated scattering profiles to compare the achieved accuracy levels with the standard homodyne detection method. Then, the proposed method was tested on real experimental measurements, which indicated a detection improvement of at least 5.1 dB with respect to the standard approach.

For photonic-based continuous THz-wave generation for a wireless communication, a fiber-based configuration has been used. Without the fiber-optics, THz-wave generation system could be minimized by monolithic integration. Thus, based on the monolithic integration, a THz-wave generator consisting of arrayed light sources and arrayed photomixers was proposed. Arrayed light sources that can be operated at 600 GHz were designed and fabricated. Experimental results showed that the light sources have a practically uniform optical output. And then, 600-GHz power combining and directional gain were obtained in combination with arrayed photomixers.

Single-sideband (SSB) signaling is a promising technology for short and medium reach optical transmission. We propose a novel architecture of linear network-assisted long short-term memory network (LN-LSTM) to mitigate optical transmission impairments in SSB systems. With a combination of a linear network and an input-pruned LSTM network, LN-LSTM achieves better performance and lower computation complexity compared with conventional LSTM equalization. With LN-LSTM, we achieve 6.4 Tb/s ( $32\times 200$ Gb/s) wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) SSB transmission over 320km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) with a bit error rate (BER) below the 20% soft-decision forward error-correction (SD-FEC) threshold of $2.4\times 10^{-2}$ .

We report novel designs to excite Whispering Gallery Mode (WGM) of spherical microresonator in an integrated single mode optical fiber tip probe, namely, Deep Seated Negative Axicon (DSNA). The empty DSNA and partially filled polymer DSNA are explored to host the Barium Titanate/Silica microresonator as WGM resonators. An SLD source with a central wavelength of 840 nm and bandwidth of 50 nm is used to excite the microresonator. Reflected spectra are recorded in a spectrometer through an optical circulator for different resonators at various locations. Experimentally the quality factor Q as high as ~7×103 is achieved from the design. It is observed that spectral characteristics and Q value are affected by the resonator’s position, size and the material. The Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation results have also been included in support of the design.

We investigate relevant parameters which affect the all-optical pulse compression system of a microwave (RF) broadband signal based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in an optical fiber. These parameters include the waveform, the extinction ratio (ER) of the probe pulse, the power of the pump and probe lightwaves, the temporal period of the signal to be compressed, and the Brillouin gain coefficient of the fiber. We observe that the better modulation waveform of the probe pulse is a rectangular short pulse. The most critical parameter is the ER of the probe pulse, which is positively correlated with the all-optical RF pulse-compression performance. When the ER is limited to be less than ~35 dB, the Brillouin gain coefficient, the temporal period of the signal to be compressed, and the power of the pump lightwave are all positively correlated with the RF pulse-compression performance. The experimental results verify the theoretical expectation and the pulse-compression performance is experimentally optimized.

A single-polarization fiber is an important device in many applications ranging from communications to sensors. However, most of the single-polarization fibers focus on linear polarization, and the single-polarization fiber supporting a circular polarization remains a challenge. Here, we propose a novel wavelength-tunable single-circular-polarization (SCP) twisted photonic crystal fiber (PCF). The single left-circular polarization and single right-circular polarization operate around $1.665 ~\mu \text{m}$ and $1.700 ~\mu \text{m}$ , respectively. The resonance can be tuned by adjusting the twist rate of PCF and the refractive index filling. The SCP bandwidth is up to 20 nm, and the polarization extinction ratio is as high as 1.3 dB/cm. This design not only extends the single-polarization fiber to circular polarization but also provides a twisting PCF application.

We demonstrate acousto-optic modulation of a fiber Bragg grating in a birefringent suspended core fiber up to frequencies of 5.2 MHz for the first time. At acoustic resonances lower than 820 kHz, the reflectivity of the orthogonal polarization modes is electrically switched to a superposed reflection band with a maximum modulation depth of 51% at 10 V. The wavelength peak of the polarization modes is dynamically shifted by tuning the driven electrical signal from 1.92 to 5.2 MHz. A novel side-coupled based acousto-optic device is demonstrated, indicating new possibilities for ultracompact, fast and efficient all-fiber integrated devices.

Ensuring high speed physical layer confidential data exchange in classical optical fiber channels is a critical challenge. In this letter, we experimentally demonstrated a physical secure optical communication system based on temporal spreading-then-random phase encryption scheme for secure transmission of 25 Gb/s intensity-modulated signal. Commercial low cost continuous-wave laser is employed as the optical source, and a chirped fiber Bragg grating followed by a phase modulator is utilized as a two-dimensional encryption module. Successful encryption and decryption of 25 Gb/s confidential data have been achieved by optimizing optical hardware parameters. The demonstrated system can combine the advantages of hardware and digital encryption, exhibiting great potential for providing physical layer security in future high-speed secure optical communication systems.

A configuration of integrated optical superconducting single photon detectors on lithium niobate substrates based on conventional titanium in-diffused waveguides with hybrid waveguide structures for enhancing the detector efficiency is proposed and analyzed. The sensing element in the form of a meander-like superconducting nanowire from niobium nitride is covered with an additional hybrid waveguide from a dielectric material with a higher refractive index than the LiNbO3 substrate to increase the light absorption. A special mode converter in the region free from a superconducting nanostructure is used to excite a localized mode with the maximum absorption coefficient that strongly interacts with the superconductive nanostructure. Silicon and titanium dioxide are considered and compared as suitable materials for the hybrid waveguide structures. Silicon based structures give a higher light concentration and, hence, a higher absorption coefficient. However, they are very demanding to the technological accuracy. Titanium dioxide structures potentially can be produced by the standard thin-film deposition technique and contact photolithography. The estimated absorption coefficient of 1.31 dB/μm is four orders of magnitude higher than that for the detectors with a standard titanium in-diffused waveguide, and a high transformation mode efficiency opens a way for fabrication of integrated optical superconducting single photon detectors with the efficiency comparable with other competing material platforms.

We examine moderate CO2 laser heating as a method of forming negative effective radius variations in conventional optical fiber. Fiber samples were subjected to focused CO2 laser radiation in the form of 100 ms pulses with power 0.36 to 1.3 W and thermalization time up to 2.2 s. Fiber temperatures reached 200 to 300 degrees Celsius in each pulse. The temper atures are significantly smaller than the glass transformation temperature, which is nearly 1500 °C. We show that short CO2 laser pulses may introduce negative variations up to 5 nm. The magnitude of the introduced variation increases roughly linearly for up to 6 pulses, and then fiber saturation is achieved. We reveal that it is possible to produce optical whispering gallery modes resonators in low-temperature heating mode and create a triangular-shape microresonator solely with the negative variations. The negative variations may also occur in peripheral areas of high-temperature heated fiber while introducing positive effective radius variations. To eliminate it, we propose low-temperature fiber annealing before high-temperature variations introducing. The negative variations may also be implemented to develop a new independent approach of shaping optical whispering gallery modes microresonators.

We present an acousto-optic imaging system operating in reflection-mode and utilizing a pair of compact, triggerable lasers with 532 and 1064 nm wavelength and nanosecond pulse duration. The system maps the fluence rate distribution of light transmitted through optically scattering samples. The imaging is performed using an acousto-optic probe comprising an ultrasound linear array with attached optical fiber on one side and a camera on the other. The described hardware configuration images samples with access restricted to one side only and ensures mobility of the entire setup. The major challenge of the introduced approach is mitigating the effects of laser parameter instabilities and precise synchronization of ultrasound and laser pulses. We solved this issue by developing an electronic feedback circuit and a microcontroller-based synchronization and control system triggering the ultrasound scanner. Schematics and details regarding control algorithms are introduced. The imaging performance of the system is demonstrated on examples of results obtained for solid, acoustically-homogeneous and optically scattering phantoms with and without light absorbing inclusions present. Adjusting the size and location of the region of interest within the camera sensor matrix and the number of laser pulses illuminating every frame allows for significant improvements in terms of the achievable peak signal to noise ratio. We demonstrate that the developed synchronization algorithm and system play a crucial role in ensuring imaging quality and accuracy.

Supercontinuum generation has been extensively studied in optical waveguides pumped with femtosecond pulses, while there are few reports using picosecond pump pulses with a small spectral power variation. In this paper, we numerically demonstrate the supercontinuum generation in a dispersion-engineered silicon nitride waveguide pumped with 10-ps pulses at 1550 nm wavelength. A supercontinuum from 656 to 3867 nm (2.5 octaves) is enabled by uniquely tailored dispersion. The spectrum has a power variation of < 15 dB and shows a very flat pedestal varying by < 5 dB. The spectra generated from different dispersion profiles are compared and analyzed, which verifies the unique role of dispersion tailoring in flattened supercontinuum generation. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first study on such broad and flat supercontinuum generation on a chip using picosecond pump pulses, which would be highly desirable for many applications.

We here propose and demonstrate a novel “2-in-1” fiber consisting of two freely separated fiber ends and one fiber tip mounted with nanodiamonds (NDs) containing nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers. The fiber tip with ball lens is fabricated by fusing two parallel multimode fiber with arcing discharge. The excitation and collection of the integrated NV centers through the two fiber ends, can be optimized by manipulating the fabricated lens. We also demonstrate the feasibility of all-optical thermometry using this device. This endoscopy-like probe paves the way for developing fiber-based quantum device for flexible thermometry and magnetometry.

With phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR), an optic fiber can be used as a distributed vibration sensor to perceive the external disturbance along the fiber through the phase variation of the Rayleigh backscatter light. However, due to the inevitable interference fading phenomenon, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of Rayleigh backscatter light at certain points is insufficient, thus affecting the fidelity of vibration sensing. In this paper, we propose the spectrum extraction and the rotated-vector-sum (SERVS) method to suppress the interference fading in the pulse-intensity-coding Φ-OTDR, which applies Golay complementary sequence through acousto-optic modulator (AOM). Benefited from the easier implementation, the experimental results demonstrate that the percentage of fading points can be reduced from 2.98% to 0.33% significantly and the standard deviation of differential phase is also decreased from 0.6556 rad to 0.2901 rad. Also the minimum level of averaged power spectral density (PSD) of the differential phase at whole locations along the fiber is reduced about 6 dB/Hz effectively. For the demodulated disturbance signal, no influence on the SNR is observed thus it maintains a SNR improvement of 8.6 dB compared to the traditional single pulse Φ-OTDR system, achieving a noise floor of 2.38 pϵ/√Hz.

We demonstrated high power all-fiber $2\sim 3~\mu \text{m}$ supercontinuum (SC) generation from a short piece of germania-doped fiber (GDF) pumped by a thulium-doped fiber amplifier (TDFA). As 39 W 2 $\mu \text{m}$ picosecond pulse launched into GDF, a mid-infrared SC laser with maximum average power of 33.6 W and broadband spectrum of $1.8\sim 3.0~\mu \text{m}$ was achieved, which was the record SC power in $2\sim 3~\mu \text{m}$ region based on GDF to date, to the best of the authors’ knowledge. The spectral broadening mechanism of the high-power SC generation were theoretical investigated by solving the generalized nonlinear Schrodinger equation (GNLSE).

An in-fiber Michelson interferometer (MI) formed by seven-core fiber (SCF) for low-temperature sensing is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The sensor head is constructed by a section of seven-core fiber splicing a single-mode fiber (SMF) with a taper. When the external temperature changes, the interference spectrum of the MI will shift due to thermal expansion and thermo-optic effects. By measuring the wavelength variations of the interference dip, the external temperature can be determined. Experimental results proves that the sensor exhibits a maximum linear temperature sensitivity of −0.0775 nm/°C in the temperature range of −60 °C to 15 °C, and the standard deviation is 5% in stability test. The sensor possesses high sensitivity and easy fabrication, which makes it could be a good candidate in low-temperature sensing application.

In infrared optical wireless communications, narrow beams require the perfect calibration of the base station (BS) and user terminal (UT), which cannot support multiple moving users. This paper proposes a fiber lens based optical antenna, which employs a fiber unit array and a transmit lens to generate multiple beams, achieving full beam coverage. Specifically, we first design a fiber lens to extend the spreading angle of the emitted lights. We employ the wave optics to analyze the characteristic of the fiber lens and use the geometric optics to design the parameters of the lens. With the fiber lens, we then design the optical antenna consisting of a hexagonal fiber unit array and a transmit lens. Each fiber unit generates a beam to a specific direction and different fiber units irradiate different directions. All the generated beams can fully cover the communication area. Thus, the BS has the potential to support multi-user communication via multiple beams. Simulation results verify the performance of the designed fiber lens and the optical antenna achieving full beam coverage.

A Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) temperature sensor was proposed by splicing a self-made hollow core anti-resonance fiber (HC-ARF) between two single mode fibers (SMFs). The HC-ARF was 2 mm long and one SMF was 20 mm in length. The SMF end face was coated with an Au film. When temperature varied from 45 °C to 85 °C, a sensitivity of 81.1 pm/°C was obtained at the waveband of 1550 nm∼1555 nm. When temperature varied from 35 °C to 95 °C, a sensitivity of 138.8 pm/°C was obtained at the waveband of 1571 nm∼1581 nm. Theoretical analysis suggested that the sensitivity of this proposed sensor can be easily adjusted by varying the length of the Au-coated SMF via the Vernier effect, which was confirmed by a subsequent experiment where the SMF length was varied from 20 mm to 170 mm. This work offers a simple sensitivity control method, and the proposed sensor is easy to manufacture, compact in structure, and convenient in performance control, which can be applied for a wide range of biological and chemical applications.

This paper reports the effect of core diameter of optical fiber cables on stimulated Brillouin scattering loss, which is one of the major loss characteristics of an optical fiber communication system. Analysis of this loss characteristic at three windows of the operating wavelength of a laser has been carried out through a numerical approach. Among different types of optical fiber cables, multi-mode step index silica fiber, multi-mode graded index silica fiber and plastic fibers have been considered for the numerical analysis. The numerical analysis has been performed using MATLAB in this research work. Through the comparative analysis, it has been ascertained that the Brillouin scattering loss is not only affected by the operating wavelength, but also by the core diameter of the different type of the cable. From the investigation of the comparative analysis, it is revealed that Brillouin scattering loss declines with the application of multi-mode graded index silica fiber. However, in the plastic fiber category, plastic step index fiber offers better performance.

Miniaturization of attenuated total reflectance (ATR) spectrometers has been an emerging field applying such powerful surface sensing method for in-situ spectroscopic analysis. In this work, we present a model for field propagation through ATR element under the illumination of multimode fiber (MMF) in a micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) based ATR Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic system. The core spectrometer is based on micro-fabricated Michelson interferometer using deep etching technology, in which the light propagates in-plane with respect to the silicon substrate. An ATR multiple reflection crystal is illuminated with infrared (IR) thermal blackbody radiation source through an MMF. The output light of the crystal is fiber-coupled to the MEMS interferometer then to an IR broadband photodetector. The optical system is modelled using scaler Fourier optics, where the fiber output field is represented by a group of spatially shifted elementary sources, to predict the ATR absorbance response, taking into account the partial spatial coherence nature of the MMF output. The model output leads to the requirements on the ATR measurement conditions and numerical aperture (NA) of the system. The model is compared to practical results of MEMS spectrometer which is experimentally characterized over the mid-infrared (MIR) wavenumber range from 5000 cm−1 to 2100 cm−1, lower limited by the used fiber and photodetector cut-off. Spectra of liquid samples are obtained using two different crystals and total internal reflection (TIR) angles showing good agreement with theoretical prediction.

Since optical submarine cable systems are a part of the global communications infrastructure, their total capacity must be continuously and dramatically enlarged. Recently, methods how to maximize the transmission capacity under electrical power limitations have been studied, and it has been reported that a single band (C-band only) transmission system with more fiber pairs (FPs) could be a promising technology. This finding has triggered work on submarine cables with more FPs. For a further increase in FPs in optical submarine cable systems, which also have space limitations in existing cable designs, space-division multiplexing (SDM) technologies such as multi-core fibers (MCFs) and multi-mode fibers (MMFs) could be promising solutions. In particular, 125-μm standard cladding SDM fibers are attractive for early deployment in submarine cable systems since they are expected to have high productivity and high mechanical reliability similar to existing single-mode fibers (SMFs) with the same cladding diameter. In this paper, we report transpacific MCF transmission over a 30-nm bandwidth using standard cladding ultralow-loss coupled 4-core fibers, extending our previous work. The Q2-factors of 608 (4 core × 152 WDM) SDM/WDM channels modulated with 24-Gbaud DP (dual polarization)-QPSK (quadrature phase shift keying) exceeded the assumed forward error correction (FEC) limits after a 9,150-km transmission. As a result, transmission capacity of 50.47 Tbit/s and a capacity-distance product of 461.8 Pbit/s·km were achieved for standard cladding diameter SDM fibers.

At present, a phase demodulation $\phi$ -OTDR-based on an unbalanced interferometer is widely used, but its demodulation module is easily affected by external vibration noise. To improve the reliability of a $\phi$ -OTDR, this paper proposed a phase demodulation method based on a balanced interferometer, which uses the Sagnac interferometer to obtain two Rayleigh scattering intensities and then recovers the phase information using an incoherent phase demodulation algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed method can recover the disturbance signals on the sensing optical fiber well, even when the demodulation module is in serious external vibration noise including a vibration table shaking with different frequencies, opening and closing a door, and a car honking. These results indicate that the proposed method significantly reduces the influence of environmental vibration noise on the demodulation module, and offers a promising solution for the application of a $\phi$ -OTDR in a harsh environment.

Despite significant advances in silicon photonics, optical packaging and interconnection of photonic integrated circuits constitutes a large portion of the associated manufacturing costs. Optical fibers are the dominant approach to optical interconnection. However, techniques that rely on fibers lack scalability, have low efficiency and show poor misalignment tolerance. Proposed alternative solutions using polymer waveguides have shown improved coupling efficiency, misalignment tolerance and scalability. Here we present the design, simulation and the experimental confirmation of an adiabatic silicon nitride taper to polymer waveguide coupler with only 0.52 dB of TE coupling loss at 1550-nm wavelength, excluding material loss. The coupler demonstrates $\pm 4~\mu \text{m}$ of lateral misalignment tolerance with a 1-dB penalty which, to the best of our knowledge, is the highest reported tolerance for silicon nitride to polymer waveguide coupling.

Integrated fiber components enable compact and robust laser systems but are usually not available with specialty fibers. However, specialty fibers allow power scaling of fiber lasers and amplifiers with all advantages of these fiber designs. In this context, chirally-coupled-core fibers show promising properties for optical fiber components. In this paper, we present the development of a highly-integrated signal and pump combiner in chirally-core-fibers using a side-pumping technology. Combining up to four fiber-coupled pump diodes, a pump-light limited power handling of 600 W can be achieved with an efficiency of 78%. The combiner was tested in a side-pumped single-frequency all-fiber amplifier but can also be implemented in almost any fiber laser or amplifier.

Optical fiber distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) based on phase sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (ϕ-OTDR) has a great demand in many application fields with large signals, such as railway safety monitoring, cable vibration detection, etc. However, due to the inherent limits of phase unwrapping algorithm, the large signal whose phase change exceeds π cannot be recovered correctly by DAS. In this work, the differential-unwrapping-integral (DUI) algorithm is proposed and demonstrated to replace the traditional unwrapping algorithm for large signal recovery. By utilizing differential operation to compress the signal amplitude, the large phase signal can be converted into small signal which can be recovered through unwrapping. Then, multiple integral operations and polynomial fitting compensation algorithm are applied onto the differential signal to recover the original phase signal without any signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) sacrificed. In theory, the maximum measurable phase of DUI can be improved 1390 times compared with traditional DUI algorithm. Further, the experimental results demonstrate that the dynamic range of DAS with DUI can reach up to 131.7 dB. Moreover, DUI algorithm has been tested and verified in the field test for recording the digging signals with large amplitude. This scheme can be applicable for all phase-demodulation-based sensing techniques without increasing the system complexity.

Conventional silica optical fibers can be embedded into composite structures or packaging to provide structural monitoring capabilities. In this paper, the microbending optical losses induced by the packaging of a sensing optical fiber into a sandwiched glass-fiber reinforced structure are investigated experimentally and by simulations. Results show that the positioning of the optical fiber within a plain-weave glass fiber-reinforced structure has a critical effect on microbending optical losses due to potentially induced microdeformations of the optical fiber's cylindrical shape. Similar analysis is also carried out with the use of a 1D glass-fiber layer packaging, demonstrating lower residual microbending losses after manufacturing. By the proper positioning of an optical fiber containing a series of wavelength-multiplexed fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors over a 2D plain-weave glass fabric, a 10-fold improvement in the induced optical losses is demonstrated, increasing the optical power that reaches the interrogating unit and allowing the monitoring of hundreds of meters over glass-fiber structures. Although all the analysis is focused and verified using a series of FBG sensors, the results and conclusions related to the induced microbending losses are also valid and useful for distributed optical fiber sensing approaches.

The advantages of optical fiber as a transmission medium for microwave signals have led to an increasing interest in implementing RF photonic links in radar frontends. Many critical radar applications, such as those found in modern military systems, often require a large spur-free dynamic range (SFDR) that is beyond the reach of conventional intensity modulated-direct detection (IM-DD) fiber-optic links. For a solution, we propose a coherent amplitude-modulated link with optical down-conversion that can achieve high dynamic range by employing a receiver with balanced detection and digital linearization. The link is presented along with experimental validation. The measurements show notable dynamic range enhancements over prior arts in down-conversion RF photonic links.