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Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology

© Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta

Last update: 2008-05-13

Definition: optical fibers based on fused silica or related materials

Optical fibers are long and flexible kinds of optical waveguides. They are essentially always based either on some glass or on polymers (→ plastic optical fibers). Among the glasses, fused silica (amorphous silicon dioxide, SiO₂) is the strongly dominating material (particularly for optical fiber communications, → telecom fibers), because it has a number of very favorable properties:

• Silica has a wide wavelength range with good optical transparency. In the near-infrared spectral region, particularly around 1.5 μm wavelength, silica can have extremely low absorption and scattering losses of the order of 0.2 dB/km, when the fiber preform is fabricated in very pure form with certain methods.
• Silica can be drawn into fibers at reasonably high temperatures, and has a conveniently broad glass transition.
• Fusion splicing and cleaving of silica fibers works quite well.
• A silica fiber has an amazingly high mechanical strength against pulling and even bending, provided that the fiber is not too thick and that the surfaces are well prepared. The mechanical strength of a fiber can be further improved with a suitable polymer jacket. Even simple cleaving (breaking) of silica fiber ends can provide nicely flat surfaces with sufficient optical quality.
• Silica is also chemically very stable. In particular, it is not hygroscopic.
• Silica glass can be doped with various materials, e.g. in order to raise or lower the refractive index, and with laser-active ions (→ rare-earth-doped fibers) in order to obtain active fibers, to be used e.g. in fiber amplifiers or fiber lasers. The fiber core and sometimes the fiber cladding is doped, so that the material is effectively e.g. an aluminosilicate, germanosilicate, or phosphosilicate glass. Particularly for active fibers, pure silica is usually not a suitable host glass, because it exhibits a low solubility for rare-earth ions. This leads to quenching effects due to clustering of dopant ions, even for moderate doping concentrations.
• Silica has a high damage threshold, i.e., a low tendency for phenomena such as laser-induced breakdown. This is important e.g. for fiber amplifiers when applied for the amplification of short pulses.
• Silica has a particularly low Kerr nonlinearity, which is beneficial in many cases where nonlinear effects can be detrimental.

Silica fibers dominate many applications, such as optical fiber communications (except for very short distances with plastic optical fiber), most fiber lasers and amplifiers, and fiber-optic sensors. The large efforts which have been invested into the development of various kinds of silica fibers have further increased the performance advantages of such fibers over fibers based on other materials (see below).

There are also pure silica fibers in the form of photonic crystal fibers, containing tiny air holes. Here, the guidance (waveguide function) is achieved either by a reduced effective index of the cladding (caused by a larger fraction of air) or by a photonic bandgap effect.

For special applications, certain non-silica fibers are required:

• Phosphate glass fibers can be advantageous when a high doping concentration of rare-earth ions is required.
• Fluoride fibers, often containing heavy metals, can be used for transmission of mid-infrared light, and for fiber lasers or amplifiers where low-energy laser transitions with long metastable level lifetimes are required.
• Plastic optical fibers (polymer fibers) can be cheaper and thicker than silica fibers and are used e.g. for illumination purposes and for short-range data transmission.

Bibliography

See also: fibers, telecom fibers, rare-earth-doped fibers, photodarkening, photonic crystal fibers, optical fiber communications, fluoride fibers

Categories: fibers and other waveguides, materials