Recent Progress in Fabrications and Applications of Heating-Induced Long Period Fiber Gratings

This paper presents a review of our work concerning the recent progress in fabrications and applications of heating-induced long period fiber gratings (LPFGs). Firstly, three kinds of heating fabrication techniques based on CO(2) laser, hydrogen–oxygen flame and arc discharge are demonstrated to fabricate LPFGs, i.e., standard LPFGs (SLPFGs) and helical LPFGs (HLPFGs), in different types of optical fibers such as conventional fibers, photonic crystal fibers, and photonic bandgap fibers. Secondly, the all-fiber orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode converters based on heating-induced SLPFGs and HLPFGs in different types of fibers are studied to increase the transmission capacity. Finally, the heating-induced SLPFGs and HLPFGs are investigated to develop various LPFG-based strain, pressure, torsion and biochemical sensors.