Fiber Bragg grating fabrication for dispersion slope compensation

Group-delay dispersion slope causes signal deterioration in long-distance high-data-rate communication systems. We report the fabrication of high-quality apodized and chirped fiber gratings with dispersion slopes as high as -1800 ps/nm/sup -2/ over a 0.7-mn bandwidth-sufficient to compensate for the dispersion slope of >25000-km length of standard fiber at a wavelength of 1550 nm. We believe this is the first time that fiber Bragg gratings have been specifically designed and fabricated for dispersion slope compensation. The fabrication technique uses a standard unchirped phase mask and two scans of the inscribing UV beam.