Office of Undergraduate Research

Tapered Optical Fibers, Nonlinear Optics, and Beam Shaping in Multimode Fibers

The primary project will be to construct an optical fiber tapering station, which heats and pulls glass optical fibers from 125 micron diameter down to ~3 microns. Tapered optical fibers are used in nonlinear optics to enhance the local intensity of the optical field for super-continuum generation. This will enable us to carry out a parallel research track in-line with our recently awarded RGI grant on Nonlinear Optics. The secondary project will be to implement and characterize off-set optical launch from single-mode to multimode fibers. Off-set launch is used in generating exotic optical beam shapes inside multimode fibers. We will need this capability to execute research on Anderson Localization in Optical Fibers.

Tasks and responsibilities:

The student will continue their work by writing a LabView front-end to control the tapering station. Various design parameters such as the heating duration, pull speed, pull length, etc will be tested to map out the front end parameter-space to the actual fiber taper profile. The student will use the fusion splicer to splice the off-set fibers. They will launch the laser into the single-mode fiber and characterize the output beam from the multimode fiber using the M^2 beam profiler.