Lead Salt Laser Measurements Of Dispersion And Attenuation For Infrared Fibers

Lead Salt Tunable Diode Lasers (TDL's) operating in the mid infrared region (2.6 - 30 microns) are uniquely suited sources for infrared fibers in the specific role of testing and evaluation of attenuation and dispersion losses of the materials. This unique capability results from the fact that 1) source areas of 25 microns diameter or less are easily achieved, 2) inherently TDL's are high speed devices (160 picosecond risetimes have been measured), and 3) very high photometric accuracies have been realized, and are routinely realized in practice; this permits accurate low loss measurements to be accomplished. A system which has been developed to perform these measurements will be described along with other data substantiating these performance characteristics.