Silicate glass-ceramic fibers with nonlinear optical crystals: Evaluation of propagation loss and comparison to optical materials

Optical glass fibers can propagate light signals, while their control depends on nonlinear optical crystals. In this study, we fabricated nonlinear optical glass-ceramic (GC) fibers in which the polar fresnoite phase was crystallized based on perfect surface crystallization (PSC) in the SrO–TiO2–SiO2 system. GC fibers free from voids were obtained from precursor glass fibers with a diameter of ∼100 μm by controlling PSC. The propagation loss of a GC fiber was evaluated to be ∼0.37 dB/cm, which is comparable to that of the LiNbO3 single-crystal optical waveguide.