Abnormal spectral evolution of fiber Bragg gratings in hydrogenated fibers

Principle and Applications of the Coupling of Surface Plasmons and Excitons

Surface plasmons have been attracting increasing attention and have been studied extensively in recent decades because of their half-light and half-material polarized properties. On the one hand, the tightly confined surface plasmonic mode may reduce the size of integrated optical devices beyond the diffraction limit; on the other hand, it provides an approach toward enhancement of the interactions between light and matter. In recent experiments, researchers have realized promising applications for surface plasmons in quantum information processing, ultra-low-power lasers, and micro-nano processing devices by using plasmonic structures, which have demonstrated their superiority over traditional optics structures. In this paper, we introduce the theoretical principle of surface plasmons and review the research work related to the interactions between plasmons and excitons. Some perspectives with regard to the future development of plasmonic coupling are also outlined.

High temperature resistant ultra-short DBR Yb-doped fiber laser

We present a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) Yb-doped fiber laser based on a pair of type IA fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). The high temperature resistant gratings are fabricated in high absorption hydrogen loaded Yb-doped silica fiber by use of a 244 nm argon laser and phase mask method. The DBR laser, with only 10 mm cavity length, exhibits high signal-noise ratio (SNR) of over 50 dB and can survive at 450°C in a long term with stable output power and central wavelength. Besides, the laser has a relatively low temperature sensitivity of 8.9 pm/°C, which contributes to cross-sensitization of stress and temperature.

Negative-index gratings formed by femtosecond laser overexposure and thermal regeneration

We demonstrate a method for the preparation of negative-index fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) using 800 nm femtosecond laser overexposure and thermal regeneration. A positive-index type I-IR FBG was first inscribed in H₂-free single-mode fibre using a femtosecond laser directed through a phase mask, and then a highly polarization dependant phase-shifted FBG (P-PSFBG) was fabricated from the type I-IR FBG by overexposure to the femtosecond laser. Subsequently, the P-PSFBG was thermally annealed at 800 °C for 12 hours. Grating regeneration was observed during thermal annealing, and a negative-index FBG was finally obtained with a high reflectivity of 99.22%, an ultra-low insertion loss of 0.08 dB, a blueshift of 0.83 nm in the Bragg wavelength, and an operating temperature of up to 1000 °C for more than 10 hours. Further annealing tests showed that the thermal stability of the negative-index FBG was lower than that of a type II-IR FBG, but much higher than that of a type I-IR FBG. Moreover, the formation of such a negative-index grating may result from thermally regenerated type IIA photosensitivity.