Measurement of refractive-index variation with temperature by use of long-period fiber gratings

The thermo-optic coefficient of the core material of a fiber is analyzed by use of a pair of long-period fiber gratings. First the effective index difference between the core and the cladding modes is measured from the peaks of the interference fringe generated by the grating pair. The order of the cladding mode is decided by the cutoff wavelength and the numerical aperture of the fiber. The material index of the fiber core is obtained in terms of wavelength. At each wavelength the index is chosen to minimize the difference between the measured and the calculated spectra of the grating pair. Finally the thermo-optic coefficient of the fiber core is calculated by repetition of the measurement at different temperatures. With a germanosilicate-core fiber and a boron codoped germanosilicate-core fiber, the thermo-optic coefficients were 1.1 X 10(-5)/degreesC and 0.75 X 10(-5)/degreesC, respectively. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.