A variation of the period of the grating inscripted in a fiber optic – induced by mechanical or thermal perturbation – causes a shift of the reflected peak wavelength, due to the related optical path length variation. The more surprising effect, however, is that a fiber can also burn down starting from the output end. Here, a bright white spot can be seen, which results from a hot plasma forming at the fiber end. This is achieved by creating a periodic variation in the refractive index of the fiber core, which generates a. From the first works dealing with the optimization of optical fibres transmission characteristics to accommodate long distance data transmission, realized by Charles Kao (Nobel Prize of Physics in 2009), until the actual optical fibre communication networks, a long way was paved.
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