ORC Seminar Series

"A new description of bend loss in single-mode fibres based on mode coupling"

Date: Wednesday 27 June
Venue: Lecture Theatre B, Building 46, Highfield, University of Southampton
Time: 2pm

Bend loss has been an important area of theoretical and experimental interest since the fabrication of the first single-mode fibres in the 1970's. Various theories have emerged since then to explain bend loss and account for experimental measurements but each one is essentially a modification of the previous theory. By adopting an entirely new approach based on mode coupling, a comprehensive description of bend loss can be developed that accounts for both transition and pure bend loss. This theory also predicts that it is possible to virtually eliminate bend loss by judicious design of the fibre bend shape and the fibre coating material.

Professor John Love is an applied mathematician working with optical fibres, waveguides and devices since 1973 and, since 1989, as a photonics lecturer in physics and engineering at the Australian National University in Canberra. He is co-author of "Optical Waveguide Theory" in print since 1984 and also founded the annual Australian Conference on Optical Fibre Technology (ACOFT) in the same year. Current research interests include holey fibres, bend loss mechanisms, fibres for scanning near-field optical microscopy, fibre couplers for sensing applications and few-mode fibres for communications systems.