Radiation Induced Transient Attenuation Of PCS Fiber

Some applications of optical fibers require their exposure to intense radiation fields. This exposure can potentially degrade performance of a fiber data link. Research at Los Alamos National Laboratory has recently concentrated on development of an understanding of such radiation effects at short times, less than 100 ns. In previous papers we have identified a particular type of fiber, ITT plastic-clad-silica (PCS) with Suprasil core as optimum for short time radiation-induced attenuation, but that work used very large doses of ionizing radiation, close to 1 Mrad. For these high dose exposures, moderate success in understanding the transient nature of the attenuation was realized with a geminate recombination model. In this paper, we report further studies with ITT PCS fiber over a range of doses and wavelengths. Data on other PCS fibers is included that provide performance comparable to the ITT product. Comparison to several fluorsilicate fibers is also included.