Fabrication of a highly efficient core-mode blocker using a femtosecond laser ablation technique

We present a method for the fabrication of a highly efficient core-mode blocker based on a laser micromachining technique. The process for the fabrication is as follows. A micron-sized crater is made by irradiation of an ultra-short pulse laser on the end face of a single-mode fiber, and then a defect that acts as a core-mode blocker is formed by splicing the cratered fiber with a normal fiber. The attenuation of the core mode was adjustable up to 25 dB according to the initial crater size and the splicing condition. An all-fiber acousto-optic tunable bandpass filter built with the core-mode blocker is also demonstrated, which exhibits a low insertion loss of 1.8 dB with non-resonance light suppression greater than 23 dB.