The study to be conducted in partnership with CREOL College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida will investigate the optical properties of both commercially available fibers and those produced at UCF by their unique multimaterial preform extrusion process. Although ChG fibers are transparent over the 3-12 ?m range, optical losses can be significant outside of certain favorable transmission regions. The power handling of these fibers will be experimentally measured and the results used to anchor modelling results. Pre-failure characteristics such as beam quality degradation and changes in transport properties will be investigated. A second line of work will be to develop reliable methods to couple mid-IR laser sources to these fibers with standard couplings. Here, coupling issues related to core-clad offset and tip-to-tip spacing will be investigated to demonstrate repeatable and reliable coupling.
