Fabrication of chirped fiber Bragg gratings by simple combination of stretching movements

A new stretching technique to fabricate chirped fiber Bragg gratings using a nonchirped phase mask is presented. It is based on continuous stretching and continuous UV beam scanning, which ensures phase matching between periods along the grating. Simple combinations of the fiber stretching movements of a pair of piezoelectric transducers are used to avoid unwanted period blurring and wavelength shifting. A third piezoelectric transducer can be easily added to the system to provide independent apodization through phase mask dithering. Successful fabrication of apodized and nonapodized chirped fiber gratings has been performed with this technique.