@article{ShibelgutKonkinLitvinovetal.2020, author = {Shibelgut, Alexander A. and Konkin, Dmitry A. and Litvinov, Rudolph Victorovich and Kruglov, Roman and Bunge, Christian-Alexander and Poisel, Hans}, title = {Scattering Into Guided Modes Due to Imperfect Graded-Index Structure in Polymer Optical Fibers}, series = {Journal of Lightwave Technology}, volume = {38}, journal = {Journal of Lightwave Technology}, number = {6}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)}, issn = {0733-8724}, doi = {10.1109/JLT.2020.2970752}, pages = {1454 -- 1460}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Rayleigh scattering in graded-index polymer optical fibers (GI-POF) is studied under the assumption that spherical scatterers are uniformly distributed within the layers of concentric ring structure. This approximation allows to describe typical imperfections occurring during the fabrication of GI-POFs. For the purpose of experimental characterization by side illumination, an analytical model of the light conversion into waveguide modes has been developed. This model describes the mode excitation by a multiplicative contribution of three different physical mechanisms. The corresponding experimental analysis of the light scattering has been performed and compared with numerical simulation results for the fibers with single-ring and multi-ring structures. Besides the application to GI-POFs, this article can be also applied to multi-step index fibers.}, language = {en} }