Ultrafast IR Laser Writing of Strong Bragg Gratings Through the Coating of High Ge-Doped Optical Fibers

Strong fiber Bragg gratings were written through the standard polymer coatings of "off-the-shelf" high numerical aperture single-mode optical fibers after a few seconds exposure with femtosecond pulse durations of infrared radiation through a phase mask. While writing through the acrylate coating, we obtained index modulations of up to 1.4 x 10-3 and 7 x 10-4 with and without H2 -loading, respectively.

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