Transverse Anderson Localization in Disordered Glass Optical Fibers: A Review

Materials

Arash Mafi³  Salman Karbasi²  Karl W. Koch⁴  Thomas Hawkins¹ 

[1] Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies (COMSET) and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29625, USA; E-Mails:;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; E-Mail:;Center for High Technology Materials and the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA;Optical Physics and Networks Technology, Corning Incorporated, SP-AR-01-2, Sullivan Park, Corning, NY 14831, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: Anderson localization;    optical fiber;    random optical fiber;    disordered optical fiber;    nanostructured optical fiber;    microstructured optical fiber;    glass optical fiber;    imaging fiber;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ma7085520

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Disordered optical fibers show novel waveguiding properties that can be used for various device applications, such as beam-multiplexed optical communications and endoscopic image transport. The strong transverse scattering from the transversely disordered optical fibers results in transversely confined beams that can freely propagate in the longitudinal direction, similar to conventional optical fibers, with the advantage that any point in the cross section of the fiber can be used for beam transport. For beam multiplexing and imaging applications, it is highly desirable to make the localized beam radius as small as possible. This requires large refractive index differences between the materials that define the random features in the disordered fiber. Here, disordered glass-air fibers are briefly reviewed, where randomly placed airholes in a glass matrix provide the sufficiently large refractive index difference of 0.5 for strong random transverse scattering. The main future challenge for the fabrication of an optimally disordered glass-air fibers is to increase the fill-fraction of airholes to nearly 50% for maximum beam confinement.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.