Infrared single mode chalcogenide glass fiber for space

An important measuring technique under study for the DARWIN planet finding mission, is nulling interferometry, enabling the detection of the weak infrared emission lines of an orbiting planet. This technique requires a perfect wavefront of the light beams to be combined in the interferometer. By using a single mode waveguide before detection, wavefront errors are filtered and a virtually perfect plane wavefront is obtained. In this paper the results on the development and the optical characterisation of suitable infrared transmitting chalcogenide glasses and mid-IR guiding optical fibers are reported. Two different preform techniques for manufacturing core-cladding chalcogenide fibers are described. Two types of step index fibers, prepared with Te 2As3Se5 chalcogenide glasses, offer single mode guidance at 10.6 μm. © 2007 Optical Society of America.