Mode Coupling within Inner Cladding Fibers

We report the formation of inner cladding modes in the optical fiber having an inner cladding structure. The inner cladding layer located between the core- and the cladding- layers of a conventional fiber might have, so called, inner cladding mode(s). The brief history of the inner cladding fiber and the spectral properties of the inner cladding mode are presented. By utilizing fiber gratings, the spectral properties of the inner cladding mode formed in Dispersion Compensating Fiber (DCF) are discussed. It was observed that one resonant peak of a long-period fiber grating was not sensitive to the variation on the cladding surface. With a fiber Bragg grating, a small group of unusual resonant Peaks was observed between the main Bragg Peak and the series of usual Peaks resulted from the mode coupling to counter-propagating cladding modes. Within the DCF by using fiber gratings, it is noted, at least one mode can be coupled to the inner cladding mode and a few outer cladding modes are severely affected by the inner cladding of the fiber.