Tunable phase-shifted fiber Bragg grating based on femtosecond laser fabricated in-grating bubble.

We present a type of phase-shifted fiber Bragg gratings based on an in-grating bubble fabricated by femtosecond (fs) laser ablation together with a fusion-splicing technique. A microchannel vertically crossing the bubble is drilled by fs laser to allow liquid to flow in or out. By filling different refractive index (RI) liquid into the bubble, the phase-shift peak is found to experience a linear red shift with the increase of RI, while little contribution to the change of phase shift comes from the temperature and axial strain. Therefore, such a PS-FBG could be used to develop a promising tunable optical filter and sensor.