Analysis of heat flow in optical fiber devices that use microfabricated thin film heaters

This paper describes finite element analysis of heat flow in a new class of tunable optical fiber devices that uses thin film resistive heaters microfabricated on the surface of the fiber. The high rate of heat loss from these cylindrical microstructures and the relatively low thermal diffusivity of the glass yield thermal properties (e.g. short axial thermal diffusion lengths, small radial temperature gradients and good power efficiency) that can be exploited for tuning the optical properties of in-fiber gratings. The modeling captures important thermal characteristics of these devices and anticipates their suitability for dynamic dispersion compensation and other applications in high bit rate lightwave communication systems. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.