Abstract

Over the past few years there has been considerable effort in the development of fiber optical waveguides having sufficiently low optical attenuation to be useful for short and long distance communications.¹ To date the only fibers that exhibit very low loss, say 5 dB'km. or less, have cores that are made from pure fused silica or very high silica content glass that is doped with a second component to increase slightly its refractive index.^2-5 The present success of these fibers can be partially attributed to the well developed processing technology for making ultra high purity synthetic silica glass.⁶

© 1975 Optical Society of America