Double-clad fiber
Encyclopedia
Double-clad fiber is a class of optical fiber
with a structure consisting of three layers of optical material instead of the usual two. The inner-most layer is called the core. It is surrounded by the inner cladding
, which is surrounded by the outer cladding. The three layers are made of materials with different refractive indices
.
There are two different kinds of double-clad fibers. The first was developed early in optical fiber history with the purpose of engineering the dispersion
of optical fibers. In these fibers, the core carries the majority of the light, and the inner and outer cladding alter the waveguide dispersion of the core-guided signal. The second kind of fiber was developed in the late 1980s for use with high power fiber amplifiers and fiber laser
s. In these fibers, the core is doped with active
dopant material; it both guides and amplifies the signal light. The inner cladding and core together guide the pump
light, which provides the energy needed to allow amplification in the core. In these fibers, the core has the highest refractive index and the outer cladding has the lowest. In most cases the outer cladding is made of a polymer
material rather than glass
.
This type of double-clad fiber has the advantage of very low microbending losses. It also has two zero-dispersion points, and low dispersion over a much wider wavelength
range than standard singly clad fiber. Since the dispersion of such double-clad fibers can be engineered to a great extent, these fibers can be used for the compensation of chromatic dispersion in optical communications and other applications.
In modern double-clad fibers for high power fiber amplifiers and lasers, the inner cladding has a higher refractive index than the outer cladding. This enables the inner cladding to guide light by total internal reflection
in the same way the core does, but for a different range of wavelengths. This allows diode lasers, which have high power but low brightness
, to be used as the optical pump source. The pump light can be easily coupled into the large inner cladding, and propagates through the inner cladding while the signal propagates in the smaller core. The doped core gradually absorbs the cladding light as it propagates, driving the amplification process. This pumping scheme is often called cladding pumping, which is an alternative to the conventional core pumping, in which the pump light is coupled into the small core. The invention of cladding pumping by a Polaroid fiber research team (H. Po, et al.) revolutionized the design of fiber amplifiers and lasers. Using this method, modern fiber lasers can produce continuous power up to several kilowatts, while the signal light in the core maintains near diffraction-limited beam quality.
The shape of the cladding is very important, especially when the core diameter is small compared to the size of the inner cladding. Circular symmetry in a double-clad fiber seems to be the worst solution for a fiber laser; in this case, many modes
of the light in the cladding miss the core and hence cannot be used to pump it.
In the language of geometrical optics
, most of the rays
of the pump light do not pass through the core, and hence cannot pump it.
Ray tracing
, simulations of the paraxial propagation
and mode analysis
give similar results.
the mode is not coupled, and it is vain to excite such a mode in the double-clad fiber amplifier. The scars can be distributed more or less uniformly in
so-called chaotic fibers
have more complicated cross-sectional shape and provide more uniform distribution of intensity
in the inner cladding, allowing efficient use of the pump light.
However, the scarring takes place even in chaotic fibers.
An almost-circular shape with small spiral deformation seems to be the most efficient for chaotic fibers. In such a fiber, the angular momentum
of a ray increases at each reflection from the smooth wall, until the ray hits the "chunk", at which the spiral curve is broken (see figure at right). The core, placed in vicinity of this chunk, is intercepted more regularly by all the rays compared to other chaotic fibers. This behavior of rays has an analogy in wave optics. In the language of modes
, all the modes have non-zero derivative in vicinity of the chunk, and cannot avoid the core if it is placed there. One example of modes is shown in the figure below and to the right. Although some of modes show scarring and wide voids, none of these voids cover the core.
The property of DCFs with spiral-shaped cladding can be interpreted as conservation of angular momentum. The square of the derivative of a mode at the boundary can be interpreted as pressure. Modes (as well as rays) touching the spiral-shaped boundary transfer some angular momentum to it. This transfer of angular momentum should be compensated by pressure at the chunk. Therefore, no one mode can avoid the chunk. Modes can show strong scarring along the classical trajectories (rays) and wide voids, but at least one of scars should approach the chunk to compensate for the angular momentum transferred by the spiral part.
The interpretation in terms of angular momentum indicates the optimum size of the chunk. There is no reason to make the chunk larger than the core; a large chunk would not localize the scars sufficiently to provide coupling with the core. There is no reason to locaize the scars within an angle smaller than the core: the small derivative to the radius makes the manufacturing less robust; the larger
is, the larger the fluctuations of shape that are allowed without breaking the condition 
. Therefore, the size of the chunk should be of the same order as the size of the core.
More rigorously, the property of the spiral-shaped domain follows from the theorem about boundary behavior of modes of the Dirichlet Laplacian. Although this theorem is formulated for the core-less domain, it prohibits the modes avoiding the core. A mode avoiding the core, then, should be similar to that of the core-less domain.
Stochastic optimization of the cladding shape confirms that an almost-circular spiral realizes the best coupling of pump into the core.
The efficiency of absorption of pumping energy in the fiber is an important parameter of a double-clad fiber laser. In many cases this efficiency can be approximated with
where
is the cross-sectional area of the cladding
is the radius of the core (which is taken to be circular)
is the absorption coefficient of pump light in the core
is the length of the double-clad fiber, and
is a dimensionless adjusting parameter, which is sometimes called the "filling factor"; 
.
The filling factor may depend on the initial distribution of the pump light, the shape of the cladding, and the position of the core within it.
The exponential behavior of the efficiency of absorption of pump in the core is not obvious. One could expect that some modes of the cladding (or some rays) are better coupled to the core than others; therefore, the "true" dependence could be a combination of several exponentials. Only comparison with simulations justifies this approximation, as shown in the figure above and to the right. In particular, this approximation does not work for circular fibers, see the initial work by Bedo et all, cited below.
For chaotic fibers,
approaches unity. The value of 
can be estimated by numerical analysis
with propagation of waves, expansion by modes or by geometrical optics ray tracing
, and values 0.8 and 0.9 are only empirical adjusting parameters, which provide good agreement of the simple estimate with numerical simulations for two specific classes of double-clad fibers: circular offset and rectangular. Obviously, the simple estimate above fails when the offset parameter becomes small compared to the size of cladding.
The filling factor
approaches unity especially quickly in the spiral-shaped cladding, due to the special boundary behavior of the modes of the Dirichlet Laplacian. Designers of double-clad fiber look for a reasonable compromise between the optimized shape (for the efficient couplung of pump into the core) and the simplicity of the manufacturing of the preform used to draw the fibers.
The power scaling
of a fiber laser is limited by unwanted nonlinear effects such as stimulated Brillouin scattering and stimulated Raman scattering. These effects are minimized when the fiber laser is short. For efficient operation, however, the pump should be absorbed in the core along the short length; the estimate above applies in this optimistic case. In particular, the higher the step in refractive index from inner to outer cladding, the better-confined the pump is. As a limiting case, the index step can be of order of two, from glass to air. The estimate with filling factor gives an estimate of how short an efficient double-clad fiber laser can be, due to reduction in size of the inner cladding.
, defined above, approaches unity; the following enhancement is possible at various kinds of tapering of the cladding; non-conventional shapes of such cladding are suggested.
Planar waveguides with an active gain medium take an intermediate position between conventional solid-state laser
s and double-clad fiber lasers. The planar waveguide may confine a multi-mode pump and a high-quality signal beam, allowing efficient coupling of the pump, and diffraction-limited output.
Optical fiber
An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...
with a structure consisting of three layers of optical material instead of the usual two. The inner-most layer is called the core. It is surrounded by the inner cladding
Cladding (fiber optics)
Cladding is one or more layers of material of lower refractive index, in intimate contact with a core material of higher refractive index. The cladding causes light to be confined to the core of the fiber by total internal reflection at the boundary between the two. Light propagation in the...
, which is surrounded by the outer cladding. The three layers are made of materials with different refractive indices
Refractive index
In optics the refractive index or index of refraction of a substance or medium is a measure of the speed of light in that medium. It is expressed as a ratio of the speed of light in vacuum relative to that in the considered medium....
.
There are two different kinds of double-clad fibers. The first was developed early in optical fiber history with the purpose of engineering the dispersion
Dispersion (optics)
In optics, dispersion is the phenomenon in which the phase velocity of a wave depends on its frequency, or alternatively when the group velocity depends on the frequency.Media having such a property are termed dispersive media...
of optical fibers. In these fibers, the core carries the majority of the light, and the inner and outer cladding alter the waveguide dispersion of the core-guided signal. The second kind of fiber was developed in the late 1980s for use with high power fiber amplifiers and fiber laser
Fiber laser
A fiber laser or fibre laser is a laser in which the active gain medium is an optical fiber doped with rare-earth elements such as erbium, ytterbium, neodymium, dysprosium, praseodymium, and thulium. They are related to doped fiber amplifiers, which provide light amplification without lasing...
s. In these fibers, the core is doped with active
Active laser medium
The active laser medium is the source of optical gain within a laser. The gain results from the stimulated emission of electronic or molecular transitions to a lower energy state from a higher energy state...
dopant material; it both guides and amplifies the signal light. The inner cladding and core together guide the pump
Laser pumping
Laser pumping is the act of energy transfer from an external source into the gain medium of a laser. The energy is absorbed in the medium, producing excited states in its atoms. When the number of particles in one excited state exceeds the number of particles in the ground state or a less-excited...
light, which provides the energy needed to allow amplification in the core. In these fibers, the core has the highest refractive index and the outer cladding has the lowest. In most cases the outer cladding is made of a polymer
Polymer
A polymer is a large molecule composed of repeating structural units. These subunits are typically connected by covalent chemical bonds...
material rather than glass
Glass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...
.
Dispersion-compensating fiber
In double-clad fiber for dispersion compensation, the inner cladding layer has lower refractive index than the outer layer. This type of fiber is also called depressed-inner-cladding fiber and W-profile fiber (from the fact that a symmetrical plot of its refractive index profile superficially resembles the letter W).This type of double-clad fiber has the advantage of very low microbending losses. It also has two zero-dispersion points, and low dispersion over a much wider wavelength
Wavelength
In physics, the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of the wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.It is usually determined by considering the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase, such as crests, troughs, or zero crossings, and is a...
range than standard singly clad fiber. Since the dispersion of such double-clad fibers can be engineered to a great extent, these fibers can be used for the compensation of chromatic dispersion in optical communications and other applications.
Fiber for amplifiers and fiber lasers
Total internal reflection
Total internal reflection is an optical phenomenon that happens when a ray of light strikes a medium boundary at an angle larger than a particular critical angle with respect to the normal to the surface. If the refractive index is lower on the other side of the boundary and the incident angle is...
in the same way the core does, but for a different range of wavelengths. This allows diode lasers, which have high power but low brightness
Radiance
Radiance and spectral radiance are radiometric measures that describe the amount of radiation such as light or radiant heat that passes through or is emitted from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle in a specified direction. They are used to characterize both emission from...
, to be used as the optical pump source. The pump light can be easily coupled into the large inner cladding, and propagates through the inner cladding while the signal propagates in the smaller core. The doped core gradually absorbs the cladding light as it propagates, driving the amplification process. This pumping scheme is often called cladding pumping, which is an alternative to the conventional core pumping, in which the pump light is coupled into the small core. The invention of cladding pumping by a Polaroid fiber research team (H. Po, et al.) revolutionized the design of fiber amplifiers and lasers. Using this method, modern fiber lasers can produce continuous power up to several kilowatts, while the signal light in the core maintains near diffraction-limited beam quality.
The shape of the cladding is very important, especially when the core diameter is small compared to the size of the inner cladding. Circular symmetry in a double-clad fiber seems to be the worst solution for a fiber laser; in this case, many modes
Cladding mode
In fiber optics, a cladding mode is a mode that is confined to the cladding of an optical fiber by virtue of the fact that the cladding has a higher refractive index than the surrounding medium, which is either air or the primary polymer overcoat...
of the light in the cladding miss the core and hence cannot be used to pump it.
In the language of geometrical optics
Geometrical optics
Geometrical optics, or ray optics, describes light propagation in terms of "rays". The "ray" in geometric optics is an abstraction, or "instrument", which can be used to approximately model how light will propagate. Light rays are defined to propagate in a rectilinear path as far as they travel in...
, most of the rays
Ray (optics)
In optics, a ray is an idealized narrow beam of light. Rays are used to model the propagation of light through an optical system, by dividing the real light field up into discrete rays that can be computationally propagated through the system by the techniques of ray tracing. This allows even very...
of the pump light do not pass through the core, and hence cannot pump it.
Ray tracing
Ray tracing (physics)
In physics, ray tracing is a method for calculating the path of waves or particles through a system with regions of varying propagation velocity, absorption characteristics, and reflecting surfaces. Under these circumstances, wavefronts may bend, change direction, or reflect off surfaces,...
, simulations of the paraxial propagation
and mode analysis
give similar results.
Chaotic fibers
In general, modes of a waveguide have "scars", which correspond to the classical trajectories. The scars may avoid the core, thenthe mode is not coupled, and it is vain to excite such a mode in the double-clad fiber amplifier. The scars can be distributed more or less uniformly in
so-called chaotic fibers
have more complicated cross-sectional shape and provide more uniform distribution of intensity
Intensity (physics)
In physics, intensity is a measure of the energy flux, averaged over the period of the wave. The word "intensity" here is not synonymous with "strength", "amplitude", or "level", as it sometimes is in colloquial speech...
in the inner cladding, allowing efficient use of the pump light.
However, the scarring takes place even in chaotic fibers.
Spiral shape
Angular momentum
In physics, angular momentum, moment of momentum, or rotational momentum is a conserved vector quantity that can be used to describe the overall state of a physical system...
of a ray increases at each reflection from the smooth wall, until the ray hits the "chunk", at which the spiral curve is broken (see figure at right). The core, placed in vicinity of this chunk, is intercepted more regularly by all the rays compared to other chaotic fibers. This behavior of rays has an analogy in wave optics. In the language of modes
Normal mode
A normal mode of an oscillating system is a pattern of motion in which all parts of the system move sinusoidally with the same frequency and with a fixed phase relation. The frequencies of the normal modes of a system are known as its natural frequencies or resonant frequencies...
, all the modes have non-zero derivative in vicinity of the chunk, and cannot avoid the core if it is placed there. One example of modes is shown in the figure below and to the right. Although some of modes show scarring and wide voids, none of these voids cover the core.
The property of DCFs with spiral-shaped cladding can be interpreted as conservation of angular momentum. The square of the derivative of a mode at the boundary can be interpreted as pressure. Modes (as well as rays) touching the spiral-shaped boundary transfer some angular momentum to it. This transfer of angular momentum should be compensated by pressure at the chunk. Therefore, no one mode can avoid the chunk. Modes can show strong scarring along the classical trajectories (rays) and wide voids, but at least one of scars should approach the chunk to compensate for the angular momentum transferred by the spiral part.
The interpretation in terms of angular momentum indicates the optimum size of the chunk. There is no reason to make the chunk larger than the core; a large chunk would not localize the scars sufficiently to provide coupling with the core. There is no reason to locaize the scars within an angle smaller than the core: the small derivative to the radius makes the manufacturing less robust; the larger
is, the larger the fluctuations of shape that are allowed without breaking the condition . Therefore, the size of the chunk should be of the same order as the size of the core.More rigorously, the property of the spiral-shaped domain follows from the theorem about boundary behavior of modes of the Dirichlet Laplacian. Although this theorem is formulated for the core-less domain, it prohibits the modes avoiding the core. A mode avoiding the core, then, should be similar to that of the core-less domain.
Stochastic optimization of the cladding shape confirms that an almost-circular spiral realizes the best coupling of pump into the core.
Filling factor
where
is the cross-sectional area of the cladding is the radius of the core (which is taken to be circular) is the absorption coefficient of pump light in the core is the length of the double-clad fiber, and is a dimensionless adjusting parameter, which is sometimes called the "filling factor"; .The filling factor may depend on the initial distribution of the pump light, the shape of the cladding, and the position of the core within it.
The exponential behavior of the efficiency of absorption of pump in the core is not obvious. One could expect that some modes of the cladding (or some rays) are better coupled to the core than others; therefore, the "true" dependence could be a combination of several exponentials. Only comparison with simulations justifies this approximation, as shown in the figure above and to the right. In particular, this approximation does not work for circular fibers, see the initial work by Bedo et all, cited below.
For chaotic fibers,
approaches unity. The value of can be estimated by numerical analysisNumerical analysis
Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation for the problems of mathematical analysis ....
with propagation of waves, expansion by modes or by geometrical optics ray tracing
Ray tracing (physics)
In physics, ray tracing is a method for calculating the path of waves or particles through a system with regions of varying propagation velocity, absorption characteristics, and reflecting surfaces. Under these circumstances, wavefronts may bend, change direction, or reflect off surfaces,...
, and values 0.8 and 0.9 are only empirical adjusting parameters, which provide good agreement of the simple estimate with numerical simulations for two specific classes of double-clad fibers: circular offset and rectangular. Obviously, the simple estimate above fails when the offset parameter becomes small compared to the size of cladding.
The filling factor
approaches unity especially quickly in the spiral-shaped cladding, due to the special boundary behavior of the modes of the Dirichlet Laplacian. Designers of double-clad fiber look for a reasonable compromise between the optimized shape (for the efficient couplung of pump into the core) and the simplicity of the manufacturing of the preform used to draw the fibers.The power scaling
Power scaling
Power scaling of a laser is increasing its output power without changing the geometry, shape, or principle of operation. Power scalability is considered an important advantage in a laser design....
of a fiber laser is limited by unwanted nonlinear effects such as stimulated Brillouin scattering and stimulated Raman scattering. These effects are minimized when the fiber laser is short. For efficient operation, however, the pump should be absorbed in the core along the short length; the estimate above applies in this optimistic case. In particular, the higher the step in refractive index from inner to outer cladding, the better-confined the pump is. As a limiting case, the index step can be of order of two, from glass to air. The estimate with filling factor gives an estimate of how short an efficient double-clad fiber laser can be, due to reduction in size of the inner cladding.
Alternative structures
For good cladding shapes the filling factor, defined above, approaches unity; the following enhancement is possible at various kinds of tapering of the cladding; non-conventional shapes of such cladding are suggested.Planar waveguides with an active gain medium take an intermediate position between conventional solid-state laser
Solid-state laser
A solid-state laser is a laser that uses a gain medium that is a solid, rather than a liquid such as in dye lasers or a gas as in gas lasers. Semiconductor-based lasers are also in the solid state, but are generally considered as a separate class from solid-state lasers .-Solid-state...
s and double-clad fiber lasers. The planar waveguide may confine a multi-mode pump and a high-quality signal beam, allowing efficient coupling of the pump, and diffraction-limited output.