Phase-Disturbing Speckle-Suppressing by Contact Fiber Scrambler

To measure the focal ratio degradation of astronomical fibers, we use laser as the light source which can do with bringing the light to a focal point and we can control the injection position. The laser has a high coherency and there are a number of modes in the large-core fiber. Consequently, the output spot will be a speckle. The presence of speckle makes the energy distribution of optical field uneven, so that it's hard to calculate the spot radius. To reduce the influence of the speckle, the contact-type mode scrambler is developed in our research. It's used to make the fiber vibrate at a suitable frequency of 0-80 Hz, and the vibration amplitude is 0.5 cm. The phase of different propagation modes is changed randomly in order to vibrate the modes and reduce the influence of the speckle. Different vibration result is observed by setting different vibration frequency and different CCD exposure time. The estimate of the vibration result can be given by using the method of contrast and Fourier Transform. Three different core diameters (10μm, 125μm, 320μm) are contrast with each other for convenience. The result shows that the vibration frequency between 65-70 Hz is best, and the optimum exposure time is 30 ms for all three diameters. The vibration of fiber using mode scrambler can reduce the speckle obviously under coherent illumination.