Fabrication and applications of low OH photonic crystal fibres

• Main Author: Gris Sanchez, Itandehui
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Bath 2013

The aim of this thesis is to consistently fabricate low OH content silica solid-core photonic crystal 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 OH contamination of glass during fabrication whilst the third method is focused on obtaining low OH fibres by reducing the OH content of already contaminated glass. The local attenuation at the ends of these low OH fibres is notoriously worsen when they are exposed to the atmospheric water vapour, the levels of this attenuation depending very strongly with core diameter. The low OH levels achieved (0.19 ppm) in the small-core photonic crystal fibres open the scope to applications in non linear optics where standard levels of absorption are detrimental. In particular, the principle of a widely tunable source (across the OH absorption peak at 1383 nm) delivering femtosecond pulses beyond 2 μm is demonstrated experimentally.