Quantitative evaluation of fiber fuse initiation with exposure to arc discharge provided by a fusion splicer

Abstract

The optical communication industry and power-over-fiber applications face a dilemma as a result of the expanding demand of light power delivery and the potential risks of high-power light manipulation including the fiber fuse phenomenon, a continuous destruction of the fiber core pumped by the propagating light and triggered by a heat-induced strong absorption of silica glass. However, we have limited knowledge on its initiation process in the viewpoint of energy flow in the reactive area. Therefore, the conditions required for a fiber fuse initiation in standard single-mode fibers were determined quantitatively, namely the power of a 1480 nm fiber laser and the arc discharge intensity provided by a fusion splicer for one second as an outer heat source. Systematic investigation on the energy flow balance between these energy sources revealed that the initiation process consists of two steps; the generation of a precursor at the heated spot and the transition to a stable fiber fuse. The latter step needs a certain degree of heat accumulation at the core where waveguide deformation is ongoing competitively. This method is useful for comparing the tolerance to fiber fuse initiation among various fibers with a fixed energy amount that was not noticed before.

Cavity Formation Modeling of Fiber Fuse in Single-Mode Optical Fibers

“…A fiber fuse can be generated by bringing the end of a fiber into contact with an absorbent material or melting a small region of a fiber using an arc discharge of a fusion splice machine [6,15,16]. If a fiber fuse is generated, an intense bluewhite flash occurs in the fiber core, and this flash propagates along the core in the direction of the optical power source at a velocity on the order of 1 m/s.…”

Cavity Generation Modeling of Fiber Fuse in Single-Mode Optical Fibers

“…The Δz values at T ¼ 12, 700 K were estimated using Eqs. (16) and (17). When t ¼ 20 μs, the calculated Δz value is given by Δz ¼AE16:7 μm: This Δz value is of the same order as the observed periodic cavity interval (13-22 μm) [13].…”

“…A fiber fuse can be generated by bringing the end of a fiber into contact with an absorbent material or melting a small region of a fiber using an arc discharge of a fusion splice machine [6,[15][16][17]. If a fiber fuse is generated, an intense blue-white flash occurs in the fiber core, and this flash propagates along the core in the direction of the optical power source at a velocity on the order of 1 m/s.…”

“…When a fiber fuse is generated, the core layer in which the fuse propagates is seriously damaged, and the damage has the form of periodic bullet-shaped cavities or non-periodic filaments remaining in the core [6][7][8][9][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] (see Figure 1). Needless to say, the density in a cavity or filament is lower than that of the neighboring silica glass.…”

Exploring the initiation of fiber fuse

“…In literature, fiber fuse for research was only produced by unmeasurable means, such as deliberately damaging the laser-on fibers via collision to metals 4,11 , immersion in metal powders 5,18 or shocking in electric arcs 10,17 . However, these complicated circumstances could include multiple mechanisms 20,21 that induced damages to fibers that triggered the fiber fuses.…”