<title>Polymer optical fiber photosensitivity and highly tunable optical fiber Bragg grating</title>

Abstract

Photosensitive optical fibres provide great potential for development of many important devices. The application of photosensitivity of optical fibres has profound impact to telecommunication at the 1550nm window and. increasingly, to optical fibre sensing as well as other systems. Large tunability in fibre grating is of great significance for future dense wavelength division multiplexing where channel selectivity and reconfigurability are of prime concern. The group in University of New South Wales has recently investigated the photosensitivities of various polymer optical fibres and has demonstrated that polymer optical fibre Bragg grating based on poly(methyl methacrylate) could be made and tuned over a range of more than 7Onm, far exceeding that could possibly achieved in conventional silica fibre Bragg gratings. More recently, the photosensitivity of a low loss new polymer fibre material-CYTOP has been demonstrated. These research activities and results unfold the great potential of realising a new class of fibre Bragg grating for various photonic applications. This paper will review the recent developments and will discuss some of the important prospects and remaining challenges in polymer fibre Bragg gratings and related topics.