Fiber fuse phenomenon in step-index single-mode optical fibers

The unsteady-state thermal conduction process in step-index single-mode (SM) optical fiber was studied theoretically with the explicit finite-difference method. We considered a high-temperature loss-increase mechanism, which includes two factors that bring about an increase in the absorption coefficients: 1) electronic conductivity due to the thermal ionization of a Ge-doped silica core and 2) thermochemical SiO production in silica glass. The core-center temperature changed suddenly and reached over 4×10⁵ K when a 1.064-μm laser power of 2 W was input into the core layer heated at 2723 K. This rapid heating of the core initiated the "fiber fuse" phenomenon. The high-temperature core areas were enlarged and propagated toward the light source. The propagation rates of the fiber fuse, estimated at 1.064 and 1.48 μm, were in fair agreement with the experimentally determined values. We found that the threshold power for initiating the fiber fuse increases from 0.98 to 1.26 W when the input laser wavelength is increased from 1.06 to 1.55 μm.