Tapering fibre

Optical fibres can be post-processed in order to create a number of interesting devices for telecommunications, astrophysics and medical applications. For example, towards the end of my PhD I focused on the post-processing of optical fibres to create tapers for astrophotonic devices. Optical fibres with unique refractive index profiles, such as a logarithmic profiles can give endlessly adiabatic tapers. This enables extremely short tapers with minimum loss.

Video of a 'ribbon' taper

A row of optical fibres is post-processed to make one part of an all-fibre pseudo-slit reformatter. This section is made of a bundle of optical fibres, kept in a row and we label it the 'ribbon' section. The pseudo-slit reformatter devices convert the modes of a multimode core to the modes of a linear pseudo-slit output structure, achieving a diffraction limited pattern in one direction. They are made by sweeping the fibres with a butane-oxygen flame (the saturating light seen in the video) and gently stretching the optical fibres. Read more in our published paper.

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