Fast mode decomposition in few-mode fibers.

Retrieval of the optical phase information from measurement of intensity is of a high interest because this would facilitate simple and cost-efficient techniques and devices. In scientific and industrial applications that exploit multi-mode fibers, a prior knowledge of spatial mode structure of the fiber, in principle, makes it possible to recover phases using measured intensity distribution. However, current mode decomposition algorithms based on the analysis of the intensity distribution at the output of a few-mode fiber, such as optimization methods or neural networks, still have high computational costs and high latency that is a serious impediment for applications, such as telecommunications. Speed of signal processing is one of the key challenges in this approach. We present a high-performance mode decomposition algorithm with a processing time of tens of microseconds. The proposed mathematical algorithm that does not use any machine learning techniques, is several orders of magnitude faster than the state-of-the-art deep-learning-based methods. We anticipate that our results can stimulate further research on algorithms beyond popular machine learning methods and they can lead to the development of low-cost phase retrieval receivers for various applications of few-mode fibers ranging from imaging to telecommunications.

Influence of electron irradiation on optical properties of Bismuth doped silica fibers.

We report a study of the attenuation spectra transformations for a series of Bismuth (Bi) doped silica fibers with various contents of emission-active Bi centers, which arise as the result of irradiation by a beam of high-energy electrons. The experimental data reveal a substantial decrease of concentration of the Bi centers, associated with the presence of Germanium in silica glass, at increasing the irradiation dose (the resonant-absorption bleaching effect in germano-silicate fiber). In contrast, the spectral changes that appear in Bi doped alumino-silicate fiber have through irradiation a completely different character, viz., weak growth of the resonant-absorption peaks ascribed to the Bi centers, associated with the presence of Aluminum in silica glass. These results demonstrating high susceptibility of Bi centers to electron irradiation while opposite routes of the irradiation-induced spectral changes in Bi doped germanate and aluminate fibers seem to be of worth notice for understanding the nature of these centers.

Waveguide-saturable absorber fabricated by femtosecond pulses in YAG:Cr(4+) crystal for Q-switched operation of Yb-fiber laser.

A waveguide-saturable absorber with low propagation loss is fabricated by femtosecond pulses in YAG:Cr(4+) crystal. Q-switch operation of a Yb fiber laser with the new saturable absorber having absorption saturation parameters similar to the bulk YAG:Cr(4+) crystal is demonstrated.