Structural Analysis of a Cavitary Region Created by Femtosecond Laser Process

Femtosecond laser machining has been applied for creating a sensor function in silica glass optical fibers. Femtosecond laser pulses make it possible to fabricate micro structures in processed regions of a very thin glass fiber line because femtosecond laser pulses can extremely minimize thermal effects. With the laser machining to optical fiber using a single shot of 210-fs laser at a wavelength of 800 nm, it was observed that a processed region surrounded a thin layer which seemed to be a hollow cavity monitored by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). This study aims at a theoretical investigation for the processed region by using a numerical analysis in order to embed sensing function to optical fibers. Numerical methods based finite element method (FEM) has been used for an optical waveguide modeling. This report suggests two types modeling and describes a comparative study on optical losses obtained by the experiment and the numerical analysis.