TY - JOUR A1 - Shibelgut, Alexander A. A1 - Konkin, Dmitry A. A1 - Litvinov, Rudolph Victorovich A1 - Kruglov, Roman A1 - Bunge, Christian-Alexander A1 - Poisel, Hans T1 - Scattering Into Guided Modes Due to Imperfect Graded-Index Structure in Polymer Optical Fibers JF - Journal of Lightwave Technology N2 - 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. KW - Laser beams KW - Optical fibers KW - Polymers KW - Measurement by laser beam KW - Rayleigh scattering Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/JLT.2020.2970752 SN - 0733-8724 VL - 38 IS - 6 SP - 1454 EP - 1460 PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ER -