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The Fiber-Optics Laboratory (FOL) was
founded in 1990, at the Department of Physics of the Korea Advanced Institute
of Science and Technology (KAIST). The FOL group is led by Professor Byoung Yoon
Kim and currently composed of 8 graduate students.
The research topics of interest include fiber lasers, nonlinear phenomena in
optical fiber, acousto-optic coupling, optical phenomena
in micro-structured fibers and chaotic phenomena in fiber laser and
fiber component, as well as conventional fiber components.
The fiber lasers cover narrow-linewidth
laser (~kHz), tunable laser, multi-wavelength laser and mode-locked laser,
which aim for sensor and tele-communication applications.
The nonlinear phenomena deals with supercontinuum-related
application and optical similariton propagation in conventional
fiber, micro-structured fibers and laser cavity.
The research about acousto-optic coupling
is carried out through flexural, longitudinal and torsional acoustic
waves. The periodic perturbation
by
the acoustic waves can induce the transverse mode conversion or polarization
mode conversion. Various types of multi-functional optical filter and tele-communication
components are already developed, which include notch filter, band-pass filter,
add-drop filter, gain-flattening filter and so on.
And optical phenomena in tapered fiber
and photonic band-gap fiber is also under investigation. From basic optical
mode to light-matter and acousto-optic interactions is treated.
Furthermore sub-harmonic bifurcation
and
chaotic phenomena in fiber component and fiber laser and coupled cavity is
also under active investigations.
As a former topics, new sensors
based on fiber lasers as well as traditional sensors such as fiber optics
gyroscopes, acoustic sensor arrays and low coherence interferometry were
intensively studied. The fiber laser sensors in particular have been introduced
by the FOL and attracted a lot of attentions with significant advantages over
the conventional counterparts, i.e. improved signal intensity, resolution and
novel polarimetric
sensing mechanism. Those include fiber laser gyroscopes and polarimetric
sensors for temperature, strain and magnetic field measurements.
Some of the researches were commercialized and became the world's first
products by the spin-off company, FiberPro.
The FOL group is seeking for both the academic superiority and practical
applications of the technology.
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