FABRICATION AND SUPERFLUORESCENCE OF RARE-EARTH CHELATE-DOPED GRADED-INDEX POLYMER OPTICAL FIBERS

Rare-earth chelate-doped graded index (GI) polymer optical fibers (POF ) are proposed and fabricated. The attenuation loss was measured to be 0.4 dB/m at 650 nm for a GI POF doped with 1 wt% of europium (Eu) che late. Lifetime shortening and spectral narrowing verified the occurren ce of superfluorescence at 614 nm in the Eu chelate-doped GI POF pumpe d with xenon flashlamps. The demonstration of superfluorescence shows that rare-earth chelate-doped GI POFs are appealing as optical amplifi ers and superfluorescent sources in a variety of communication and sen sor applications. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951( 97)01443-5].