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Abstract
An introduction is provided to the feature issue of Optical Materials Express on Optical Fiber Materials.
© 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement
Optical fibers, a major contributor to the multi-trillion dollar annual global economic impact of light, enable all modern means of communication and e-commerce, from streaming videos and telemedicine to bank transfers and online shopping. They are also used in medical endoscopes to peer into the body, and to bring high-power laser light to machining instruments used to make parts for practically all consumer electronics, automobiles, and planes. Further, optical fibers are having emergent impact in sensing and lighting. In bestowing the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics to Charles Kao for “groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication,” the Nobel Committee validated the global impact and societal benefits of optical fiber.
However, continued demand for ever greater performance, functionality, and use in extreme environments, not to mention scientific inquiry, has created a renaissance in optical fiber materials. Indeed, it is the interaction of light with matter that fundamentally originates all optical phenomena. Accordingly, many are realizing that new and useful effects are borne out of new materials and material microstructures that comprise modern optical fibers.
The purpose of this Special Issue of Optical Materials Expresswas to review and inventory the state of the art in optical fiber materials through a combination of invited and contributed papers from around the World. Herein, you will find published 11 papers that cover a wide range of fiber materials and uses. This includes the polymer coatings (Shaidullin, et al. [1]) and crystalline claddings (Kim, et al. [2]) and their respective influence on lasing performance. Several papers dive into novel oxide glass compositions, including calcium silicates (Cavillon, et al. [3]), alumino-silicates (Mady, et al. [4]), and more multicomponent systems (Duarte, et al. [5]), and selenide-based chalcogenides (Sojka, et al. [6].) Bismuth doped glasses and fibers continue to be a topic of considerable interest as three papers discuss its optical and lasing properties (Thipparapu, et al. [7]; Kir’yanov, et al. [8]; Firstov, et al. [9]). While the enabling materials take center stage, novel waveguiding based on Anderson localization (Mafi, et al. [10]) and mid-infrared emissions spectrally tailored via pump arrangements (Halpin, et al. [11]) also are discussed to further show the important counter-play between materials and device configurations. We hope you enjoy.
References
1. R. Shaidullin, R. Ismagilova, and O. Ryabushkin, “Influence of optical absorption of polysiloxane polymers on active fiber heating under lasing conditions,” Opt. Mater. Express 9(4), 1577–1582 (2019). [CrossRef]
2. W. Kim, S. Bayya, B. Shaw, J. Myers, S. Qadri, R. Thapa, D. Gibson, C. Mcclain, F. Kung, J. Kolis, B. Stadelman, and J. Sanghera, “Hydrothermally cladded crystalline fibers for laser applications [Invited],” Opt. Mater. Express 9(6/1), 2716–2728 (2019). [CrossRef]
3. M. Cavillon, P. Dragic, C. Kucera, T. Hawkins, and J. Ballato, “Calcium silicate and fluorosilicate optical fibers for high energy laser applications,” Opt. Mater. Express 9(5), 2147–2158 (2019). [CrossRef]
4. F. Mady, A. Guttilla, M. Benabdesselam, and W. Blanc, “Systematic investigation of composition effects on the radiation-induced attenuation mechanisms of aluminosilicate, Yb-doped silicate, Yb- and Yb,Ce-doped aluminosilicate fiber preforms [Invited],” Opt. Mater. Express 9(6), 2466–2489 (2019). [CrossRef]
5. J. Duarte, M. Paul, S. Das, A. Dhar, J. Leitão, M. Ferreira, and A. Rocha, “Optical amplification performance of erbium doped zirconia-yttria-alumina-baria silica fiber [Invited],” Opt. Mater. Express 9(6), 2652–2661 (2019). [CrossRef]
6. L. Sojka, Z. Tang, D. Jayasuriya, M. Shen, D. Furniss, E. Barney, T. Benson, A. Seddon, and S. Sujecki, “Ultra-broadband mid-infrared emission from a Pr3+/Dy3+ co-doped selenide-chalcogenide glass fiber spectrally shaped by varying the pumping arrangement [Invited],” Opt. Mater.Express 9(5), 2291–2306 (2019). [CrossRef]
7. N. Thipparapu, Y. Wang, S. Wang, A. Umnikov, P. Barua, and J. Sahu, “Bi-doped fiber amplifiers and lasers [Invited],” Opt. Mater. Express 9(6), 2446–2465 (2019). [CrossRef]
8. A. Kir’yanov, A. Halder, Y. Barmenkov, E. Sekiya, and K. Saito, “Discussion on Raleigh scattering as a dominant loss factor in VIS/NIR in bismuth-doped silicate fibers [Invited],” Opt. Mater. Express 9(7), 2817–2827 (2019). [CrossRef]
9. S. Firstov, S. Alyshev, V. Khopin, A. Kharakhordin, A. Lobanov, E. Firstova, K. Riumkin, A. Khegai, M. Melkumov, A. Guryanov, and E. Dianov, “Effect of heat treatment parameters on the optical properties of bismuth-doped GeO2:SiO2 glass fibers,” Opt. Mater. Express 9(5), 2165–2174 (2019). [CrossRef]
10. A. Mafi, M. Tuggle, C. Bassett, E. Mobini, and J. Ballato, “Advances in the fabrication of disordered transverse Anderson localizing optical fibers [Invited],” Opt. Mater. Express 9(7), 2769–2774 (2019). [CrossRef]
11. A. Halpin, N. Couture, and J. Meénard, “Optical pulse structuring in gas-filled hollow-core kagomé PCF for generation and detection of phase-locked multi-THz pulses [Invited],”Opt. Mater. Express 9(7), 3115–3122 (2019). [CrossRef]