Research Support for the Laboratory for Lightwave Technology

The Laboratory for Lightwave Technology within the Division of Engineering at Brown University is one of the few university laboratories at which it is possible to design, fabricate, and characterize optical fibers of not only traditional, but of unusual design. These fibers have an increasingly important role in a host of applications of significance to the defense requirements of the United States. Among these are fiber lasers for the measurement of clear air turbulence in an important eye-safe region of the spectrum, fiber sensors for the measurement of temperature, strain, not only in high temperature composite materials, but in structural concrete, important for roads, runways, and buildings. We are also engaged in research, an outgrowth of our work in optical fibers, on novel techniques for the formation of nano-phase oxide particles, both ceramic and amorphous. The work on amorphous oxides is associated with our MCVD and OVD laboratories. In these, to be discussed below, we have proposed and studied a new technique for the formation of multi- component oxides to be used in the doping of optical fiber preforms. In this synthesis, an aerosol of organometallic precursors is convectively transported into a reaction zone where it is pyrolized. The liquid aerosol is homogeneous at the molecular level, so that subsequent reactions produce glasses that are not phase separated. This has also been used to study the synthesis of high temperature ceramic nanophase single crystal oxides that may be produced at a high rate. The synthesis of both glasses and ceramics using novel techniques has meshed with our research in novel optical fibers and fiber sensors. In this report, we discuss the general activities of our laboratory.