Abstract

Optical losses in silica glass fibers remain a challenge in their applications. The main contributor to optical attenuation is Rayleigh scattering. This review discusses the recent studies and findings on voids in silica glass and their effects on the optical loss. Through experimental studies of pressure-quenching on glass at the melting temperature, void size shrunk, and the optical loss was reduced to approximately half of that of conventional optical fibers at 0.2 GPa. Our modeling results predicted that further reduction was expected, credited to the optimization of the glass network, called topological pruning, under high compressive pressures of up to 4 GPa.

Significant suppression of Rayleigh scattering loss in silica glass formed by the compression of its melted phase

Madoka Ono, Shuhei Aoyama, Masanori Fujinami, and Setsuro Ito
Opt. Express 26(7) 7942-7948 (2018)

Optical seizing and merging of voids in silica glass with infrared femtosecond laser pulses

Wataru Watanabe, Tadamasa Toma, Kazuhiro Yamada, Junji Nishii, Ken-ichi Hayashi, and Kazuyoshi Itoh
Opt. Lett. 25(22) 1669-1671 (2000)

Void-nanograting transition by ultrashort laser pulse irradiation in silica glass

Ye Dai, Aabid Patel, Juan Song, Martynas Beresna, and Peter G. Kazansky
Opt. Express 24(17) 19344-19353 (2016)

Compact nano-void spectrometer based on a stable engineered scattering system

Qi Sun, Przemyslaw Falak, Tom Vettenburg, Timothy Lee, David B. Phillips, Gilberto Brambilla, and Martynas Beresna
Photon. Res. 10(10) 2328-2336 (2022)

Reduction of scattering loss in fluoroindate glass fibers

Jiafang Bei, Tanya M. Monro, Alexander Hemming, and Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem
Opt. Mater. Express 3(9) 1285-1301 (2013)