Chirped rectilinear core longitudinally-graded optical fibers

•Straight-forward method developed to fabricate rectangular core optical fiber.•Rectangular dimensions can chirp along length enhancing functionality.•In chirped fiber, aspect ratio changes by nearly 200%.•Such rectangular core fibers useful for telecommunication and biomedical applications.

Reported here is a straight-forward and flexible method to fabricate silica optical fibers of circular cladding cross-section and rectilinear cores whose aspect ratio and refractive index profile changes with position along the fiber in a deterministic way. Specifically, a modification to the process recently developed to produce longitudinally-graded optical fibers, LGFs [Opt. Express 20 (2012) 17394–17402], was employed. Herein reported are MCVD-derived germanosilicate fibers with rectangular cores where the aspect ratio changes by nearly 200% and the average refractive index changed by about 5%. Fiber losses were measured to be about 50 dB/km. Such rectangular core fibers are useful for a variety of telecommunication and biomedical applications and the dimensional and optical chirp provides a deterministic way to control further the modal properties of the fiber.