Brillouin Scattering in Polymer Optical Fibers: Fundamental Properties and Potential Use in Sensors

We review the fundamental properties of Brillouin scattering in a perfluorinated graded-index polymer optical fiber (PFGI-POF) with 120 mu m core diameter. The experiments were performed at 1.55 mu m telecommunication wavelength. The Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) and the Brillouin bandwidth were 2.83 GHz and 105 MHz, respectively. The Brillouin gain coefficient was calculated to be 3.09 x 10(-11) m/W, which was comparable to that of fused silica fibers. The Brillouin threshold power of the 100 m POF was estimated to be as high as 24 W, which can be, for practical applications, reduced by using POFs with smaller cores. These properties were compared with those of silica-based graded-index multi-mode fibers. We also investigated the BFS dependences on strain and temperature. They showed negative dependences with coefficients of -121.8 MHz/% and -4.09 MHz/K, respectively, which are -0.2 and -3.5 times as large as those in silica fibers. These BFS dependences indicate that the Brillouin scattering in PFGI-POFs can be potentially applied to high-accuracy temperature sensing with reduced strain sensitivity.