This paper describes a prospect for broadband mid-infrared (mid-IR) highly coherent supercontinuum generation. Tellurite and chalcogenide glass with high transparency up to the mid-IR range are used as fiber materials. We successfully develop all-solid hybrid microstructured optical fibers made of tellurite and chalcogenide glass to control chromatic dispersion and demonstrate that highly nonlinear soft glass microstructured optical fibers are promising media for broadband mid-IR highly coherent supercontinuum generation.

The advances in fluorescent diamond-based magnetic field sensors have led this technology into the field of fiber optics. Recently, devices employing diamond nanobeams or diamond chips embedded on an optical fiber tip enabled achieving fT-level sensitivities. Nevertheless, these demonstrations were still confined to operation over localized magnetic field sources. A new approach of volumetric incorporation of nanodiamonds into the optical fiber core enables optical fibers sensitive to magnetic field at any point along the fiber length. We show that information on the perturbed spin state of a diamond nitrogen-vacancy color center can be transmitted over a macroscopic length in an optical fiber, in presence of noise from large concentration of the color centers along the fiber. This is exploited in optical readout at the fiber output not only of the magnetic field value, but also spatially variable information on the field, which enables the localization of its source.

Optical fibers that can sustain large elastic deformations are promising building blocks in soft robotics, medical and wearable devices, and advanced textiles. Thus far, however, the fabrication methods developed for soft optical fibers have remained unmatured. Here, we present thermal drawing as a materials and processing platform to fabricate 10s of meters-long soft, multi-material optical fibers with intriguing architectures. It offers unprecedented opportunities to realize step-index soft optical fibers, as well as photonic crystal fibers for transmission, reflection, and sensing.

We report on successful refractive index profiling of commercially available step-index and in-house made graded-index multimode specialty optical fibers by means of X-ray computed microtomography. Our results demonstrate that the latter is an advantageous technique for characterizing large core optical fibers, which allows for retrieving information about the refractive index at optical frequencies by exploiting the absorption coefficient of X-rays.

Adaptative objects based on shape-memory materials are expected to significantly impact numerous technological sectors including optics and photonics. In this work, we demonstrate the manufacturing of shape-memory optical fibers from the thermal stretching of additively manufactured preforms. First, we show how standard commercially-available thermoplastics can be used to produce long continuously-structured microfilaments with shape-memory abilities. Shape recovery as well as programmability performances of such elongated objects are assessed. Next, we open the way for light-guiding multicomponent fiber architectures that are able to switch from temporary configurations back to user-defined programmed shapes. We strongly expect that such actuatable fibers with light-guiding abilities will trigger exciting progress of unprecedented smart devices in the areas of photonics, electronics, or robotics.