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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Writing Bragg Gratings in Multicore Fibers
Published on: April 20, 2016
Bragg grating-based optical switching in a bismuth-oxide fiber with strong χ3-nonlinearity
Irina V Kabakova1, Dan Grobnic, Stephen Mihailov
1ARC Center for Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), School of Physics, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. kabakova@physics.usyd.edu.au
Abstract:
We report the first experimental demonstration of Bragg grating-based nonlinear switching in a bismuth-oxide single-mode fiber. Exploiting the strong χ3-nonlinearity of this fiber in a cross-phase modulation scheme, we change the transmission of a probe near the grating stop band from 90 % to 20 %, a 6.5 dB extinction ratio, at powers as low as 55 W. This is an 18-fold improvement in the switching power compared to the best demonstrations in silica. The experimental results agree well with numerical simulations.
