The concept of using an optical fibre to map dynamic perturbations along the sensing fibre was first proposed by Taylor et al. (Taylor 1993) in 1993 and later demonstrated by his team in 2005 (Juarez 2005). The proposed sensor was only capable of detecting the dynamic perturbations along the sensing fibre by monitoring the changes in the pattern of the backscattered coherent Rayleigh noise (CRN...

Imaging the transverse vibrations of a resonating optical fibre cantilever is shown to be an effective method for generating 1D and 2D laser line scans. The resonant bending modes were excited by mounting a short length of 0.633μm single mode optical fibre on to a commercially available piezo-electric transducer. For an applied sinusoidal driving voltage of 20V pk-pk, the maximum displacement a...

Fibre-optic components fabricated on the same substrate as integrated circuits are important for future high-speed communications. One industry response has been the costly push to develop indium phosphide (InP) electronics. However, for fabrication simplicity, reliability and cost, gallium arsenide (GaAs) remains the established technology for integrated optoelectronics. Unfortunately, the GaA...

Distributed strain measurements on synthetic fibre ropes as used in marine applications are reported. The ropes incorporate single mode fibre-optic sensors for strain measurement. A Brillouin-amplification-based distributed strain measuring system has been utilised to interrogate the fibre sensors incorporated into a parallel yarn aramid rope. Initial results are presented to conclusively demon...

The optical destruction thresholds of conventionally etched and tube-etched near-field optical probes were measured. One of the main advantages of tube-etched tips is their smooth glass surface after taper formation. Presumably for this reason, a destruction limit of over 120 microJ was obtained, almost twice as large as that of the rougher, conventionally etched fibre probes. The use of additi...

We propose a fibre-based approach for generation of optical frequency combs (OFC) with the aim of calibration of astronomical spectrographs in the low and medium-resolution range. This approach includes two steps: in the first step, an appropriate state of optical pulses is generated and subsequently moulded in the second step delivering the desired OFC. More precisely, the first step is realis...

Active manipulation of light in optical fibres has been extensively studied with great interest because of its compatibility with diverse fibre-optic systems. While graphene exhibits a strong electro-optic effect originating from its gapless Dirac-fermionic band structure, electric control of all-fibre graphene devices remains still highly challenging. Here we report electrically manipulable in...

Optically assisted transfection is emerging as a powerful and versatile method for the delivery of foreign therapeutic agents to cells at will. In particular the use of ultrashort pulse lasers has proved an important route to transiently permeating the cell membrane through a multiphoton process. Though optical transfection has been gaining wider usage to date, all incarnations of this techniqu...

A short pulse reflected off a single sampled fibre grating is used as a transmitter, and a second sampled fibre grating with a photodiode is used as a receiver. This provides a simple encoding/decoding solution, applicable to optical CDMA networks. Introduction Optical code division multiplexing (CDM) has been proposed as an alternative to time-division multiplexing (TDM) and wavelength-divisio...

Industrial Ethernet networking has inherent advantages for many industrial applications. By utilising a standards-based solution that supports multi-vendor implementations, Industrial Ethernet users enjoy highly reliable systems, reduced costs of deployment, and a guaranteed upgrade strategy as needs evolve. New product offerings for Industrial Ethernet, power utility substations, and transport...