Adding functionality to fibre Bragg gratings

Until recently, research on optical fibre Bragg gratings has focused mainly on optimizing the fabrication of “plain” gratings, i.e. gratings with uniform amplitude and period. Grating lengths have also been limited by the size and shape of the writing beam, precluding fabrication of more complex structures. It is possible, however, to use more advanced writing and post-processing techniques to fabricate complex grating structures, whose response can be tailored to meet specific needs. We give some examples here of recent work done by the gratings group at the Optical Fibre Technology Centre, University of Sydney, Australia