Mid-IR Active Optical Fiber: Technology and Applications

A special issue of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732). This special issue belongs to the section "Lasers, Light Sources and Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 281

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Politecnico di Bari, Via Orabona, 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
Interests: optical fiber; microwave engineering; antennas and propagation; RF engineering; fiber laser
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Politecnico di Bari, Via Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
Interests: Mid-IR optical fiber; optical fiber sensors; soft glasses; fused optical fiber components; electromagnetic design
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays, optical fiber devices working in the middle-infrared (Mid-IR) range are becoming a topic of interest for academia and industry. Their promising applications in communication, imaging, environmental monitoring, sensing, medical diagnostics and therapy, defense, and material processing constitute only a part of the wide interest area. Indeed, the Mid-IR spectral region enables the vibrational bands of many molecules, this occurrence being particularly relevant for spectroscopic sensing and chemical identification.

In parallel, the development of Mid-IR optical fiber devices has experienced a rapid growth. These devices are crucial for the delivery, manipulation, and detection of Mid-IR light, enabling the integration of Mid-IR technologies into compact and efficient systems, as all-in-fiber systems. The design and fabrication of Mid-IR optical fibers present unique challenges. Thus, the exploration of alternative propagation media such as chalcogenide glasses, fluoride glasses, and crystalline materials has become a vibrant area of research.

This Special Issue aims to bring together recent advances in the design, fabrication, and application of Mid-IR optical fibers. It covers a broad spectrum of topics, including novel fiber materials, waveguiding section designs, fiber-based sensing systems, laser design and fabrication, and the integration of these fibers into actual systems for real-world applications. By highlighting these developments, we hope to shed light on the current state of Mid-IR fiber technology and inspire further research and innovation in this exciting field.

We invite researchers and industry experts to contribute original research articles, reviews, and perspectives that explore the latest technological advancements, challenges, and future directions in Mid-IR optical fiber devices.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Fiber sensors;
  • Rare-earth (co-)doped fiber devices;
  • Novel glasses and photonic materials;
  • Nonlinear fiber devices;
  • Mid-IR coherent light sources;
  • All-in-fiber systems;
  • Mid-IR sensing systems.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Antonella Maria Loconsole
Dr. Francesco Anelli
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • middle-infrared (Mid-IR) range
  • optical fibers
  • chalcogenide glasses
  • fluoride glasses
  • hollow-core fibers
  • waveguide design
  • fiber sensors
  • spectroscopic sensing
  • fiber devices
  • photonics

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

10 pages, 14490 KB  
Article
Mid-Infrared Fiber Amplification of a DFB Interband Cascade Laser
by Louis-Charles Michaud, Tommy Boilard, Réal Vallée and Martin Bernier
Photonics 2025, 12(10), 988; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics12100988 - 7 Oct 2025
Abstract
The limited availability of powerful, tunable, and reliable mid-infrared sources has historically prevented their widespread adoption in spectroscopy applications, even if most greenhouse gases’ fundamental absorption lines are found in this region of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, both mid-infrared fiber lasers and ICLs [...] Read more.
The limited availability of powerful, tunable, and reliable mid-infrared sources has historically prevented their widespread adoption in spectroscopy applications, even if most greenhouse gases’ fundamental absorption lines are found in this region of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, both mid-infrared fiber lasers and ICLs have enjoyed substantial growth in available output powers in recent years. Since the two technologies have complementary benefits, combining them could prove to be an interesting avenue to explore toward the development of a powerful, easily tunable, and narrow linewidth mid-infrared source. We report what we believe to be the first demonstration of fiber amplification of a distributed feedback interband cascade laser (DFB-ICL) operating in the mid-infrared. The system, based on an in-band pumped dysprosium-doped fluoride fiber amplifier, yields 10 dB of gain and up to 30 mW of output power at 3240 nm. We believe this is an important milestone toward power scaling of single-mode, single-frequency, and rapidly tunable mid-infrared laser sources suitable for advanced gas spectroscopy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mid-IR Active Optical Fiber: Technology and Applications)
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