Fabrication and Applications of Low OH Photonic Crystal Fibres

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to consistently fabricate low OH content silica solid-core photoniccrystal fibres of different core diameters, identified as low spectral attenuation at 1383 nm.Three different methods are proposed. Two of them are focused on preventing the OHcontamination of glass during fabrication whilst the third method is focused on obtaining lowOH fibres by reducing the OH content of already contaminated glass. The local attenuationat the ends of these low OH fibres is notoriously worsen when they are exposed to theatmospheric water vapour, the levels of this attenuation depending very strongly with corediameter. The low OH levels achieved (0.19 ppm) in the small-core photonic crystal fibresopen the scope to applications in non linear optics where standard levels of absorptionare detrimental. In particular, the principle of a widely tunable source (across the OHabsorption peak at 1383 nm) delivering femtosecond pulses beyond 2 μm is demonstratedexperimentally.

Date of Award	19 Jun 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Jonathan Knight (Supervisor)