Femtosecond laser direct written off-axis fiber Bragg gratings for sensing applications

Abstract

First order off-axis fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) were fabricated in a standard single mode fiber (SMF-28e) through femtosecond laser direct writing. A minimum offset distance between the grating and core center of 2.5 µm was found to create a multimode section, which supports two separate fiber modes (LP0,1 and LP1,1), each split into two degenerate polarization modes. The resulting structure breaks the cylindrical symmetry of the fiber, introducing birefringence (˜10-4) resulting in a polarization dependent Bragg wavelength for each mode. Based on the modal and birefringence behavior, three off-axis FBGs were fabricated with 3.0, 4.5 and 6.0 µm offsets from the core center, and then characterized in strain, temperature, and curvature. The tested off-axis FBGs exhibited a similar strain sensitivity of ~1.14 pm/µ? and a temperature sensitivity of ~12 pm/C. The curvature and orientation angle were simultaneously monitored by analyzing the intensity fluctuation and the wavelength shift of the LP1,1 Bragg resonance. A maximum curvature sensitivity of 0.53 dB/m-1 was obtained for the off-axis FBG with a 3.0 µm offset. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd