CAREER: A Program for Research and Education in Fiber-OpticsInvolving Fabrication of Novel Bragg-Grating Devices and Sensors

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9701538 Sharma The proposal deals with fabrication of new devices and sensors using fiber-optic Bragg gratings. While the characteristics of reflection Bragg gratings is quite well understood, this is not so for tapped Bragg gratings. This is proposed to be done here. A novel directional coupler consisting of two tapped Bragg gratings side-by-side will be fabricated. Its application as a wavelength sensitive light-tap will be inveqtigated. A number of such devices fabricated in series will be useful for distributed sensing of transverse strain in Smart Structures. Such a sensor will compliment the well known distributed sensing of longitudinal strain by reflection Bragg gratings in series. Reflection Bragg gratings will also be used to fabricate a chemical sensor for sensing environmental gases like NH3, H2O and CH4 in a novel correlation spectroscopy set up where a grating will replace the cumbersome bulky reference cell. With the grating set up 100% modulation of correlation between the gas absorption lines and the Bragg wavelength can be obtained unlike partial modulation by Stark shift and broadening of spectral lines as in conventional correlation spectroscopy. This technique will be used for distributed sensing of environmental gases. This will have important applications in the area of monitoring and control of atmospheric pollution. Students will be an integral part of all research activity described in the proposal. At any time over the four year duration of the proposed integrated plan one Ph.D. student will be involved in the research, working towards his/her degree in applied physics. The University has a work/study program for undergraduate students working towards their physics/engineering degrees. A student typically works as a research assistant and is paid to cover his tuition and other expenses. At any given time the proposed research will support one undergraduate student as well, assisting a graduate student in his/her research. Finally, the proposal d escribes an apprenticeship program for high school students in which they will spend 4-6 weeks of their summer getting a hands-on experience with basic devices in a fiber-optics laboratory. ***