Tunable Fabry-Perot filter in cobalt doped fiber formed by optically heated fiber Bragg gratings pair

In this paper, a tunable fiber Fabry-Perot (F-P) filter by all-optical heating is proposed. Two high reflective fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) fabricated in cobalt doped single mode fiber form the F-P cavity. The cobalt-doped fiber used here is an active fiber, and it transforms optical power from a control laser into heat effectively due to the nonradiative processes. The generated heat raises the refraction index of the fiber and enlarges the F-P cavity's length, realizing the all-optical tuning characteristics. By adjusting the power of the control laser, the resonant wavelength of our proposed fiber F-P filter can be high precisely controlled. The cavity length of the filter is carefully designed to make sure the longitude mode spacing is comparable to the grating bandwidth, making it single mode operating. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.