Measurement of UV-induced absorption and scattering losses in photosensitive fibers.

UV-assisted fabrication of gratings using photosensitive fibers is a well-established technique, based on the UV-induced permanent modification of the refractive index of the fiber material. As a result, the absorption coefficient is also changed. Here, we exploit the thermal sensitivity of whispering gallery mode resonances of the fiber itself to measure the profile of the heating along an irradiated fiber versus the input power and for different UV radiation intensities. Our technique allows discriminating between the absorption and scattering contributions to the overall losses, by comparing the results obtained with our technique with direct transmission measurements. Different photosensitive fibers are characterized by means of this technique. Nonuniform UV irradiation of photosensitive fibers can be characterized with this technique.