Abstract

A novel long-period fiber grating (LPFG) with refractive index disturbance mainly occurring in the edge region of the fiber cladding is written without any destructive damage on the fiber, based on the thermal shock and rapid cooling effects of the high frequency CO₂ laser pulses exposure method in this paper. An edge-written LPFG with a resonant peak of ~18dB is obtained using a standard telecommunication fiber. The experimental results show that such a novel LPFG structure has much higher refractive index sensitivity over conventional LPFGs side-written.

© 2007 Optical Society of America