Biography
Biography: S S Bayya
Abstract
Chalcogenide glasses, with their high refractive indices, low phonon energy, high nonlinearity and excellent transmission in the infrared (IR) region, make them ideal for incorporation into various civilian, medical and military applications such as infrared detectors, infrared lenses, planar optics, photonic integrated circuits, lasers and other non-linear optical devices. Chalcogenide glasses have also been widely studied for use in numerous potential optical fi ber applications such as fi ber lasers, amplifi ers, bright sources, as well as passive solid and hollow core IR fi bers for laser transmission. Although stable, low-loss chalcogenide based fi bers with minimum loss of <0.1 dB/m have been demonstrated, the chalcogenide based fi bers suff er from absorption and scattering losses mainly caused by impurities related to hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. Great eff orts have been made in reducing optical losses using improved chemical purifi cation techniques, but further improvements are needed in both purifi cation and fi berization technology to attain the theoretical attenuation. We have also designed and developed negative curvature, anti-resonant fi bers and demonstrated record low loss in the 9.75 – 10.5 μm range. In this paper, we review our recent eff ort in the development of low loss chalcogenide fi bers, by describing the various purifi cation methods and their impact on the optical fi ber loss and discuss the potential future outlook for these fi bers.