This review focuses on silica-based optical fibers, guiding light through the total internal reflection mechanism, that are currently used in telecommunications and sensor networks. Section I briefly introduces the fiber and fiber sensor technologies. Section II presents their various applications in radiation environments. In section III, the radiation effects on optical fibers are explained, first at a microscopic scale, with the description of point defects generated by irradiation. Then, the macroscopic consequences of the appearance of these point defects are discussed, in particular the phenomena of radiation-induced attenuation (RIA), radiation-induced emission (RIE) and radiation-induced refractive index change (RIRIC). RIA impacts nearly all applications under irradiation. We then detail the various parameters, intrinsic or extrinsic to the optical fibers that influence their amplitudes and kinetics. This improved knowledge paved the way for the radiation hardening of optical fibers through various approaches, either at material, component or system levels, that are described in section IV. Recent advances are presented for passive and for active rare-earth doped optical fibers and systems. Then, the use of fiber optic sensors is introduced, starting in section V with the latest advances in radiation-hardened point or distributed sensors. Then, the potential of this technology for radiation detection, beam instrumentation and dosimetry applications is assessed in section VI. Finally, the future prospects and the main challenges to be met in order to accelerate the implementation of this technology in the harshest environments are discussed.

Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are point optical fiber sensors that allow the monitoring of a diversity of environmental parameters, e.g., temperature or strain. Several research groups have studied radiation effects on the grating response, as they are implemented in harsh environments: high energy physics, space, and nuclear facilities. We report here the advances made to date in studies regarding the vulnerability and hardening of this sensor under radiation. First, we introduce its principle of operation. Second, the different grating inscription techniques are briefly illustrated as well as the differences among the various types. Then, we focus on the radiation effects induced on different FBGs. Radiation induces a shift in their Bragg wavelengths, which is a property serving to measure environmental parameters. This radiation-induced Bragg wavelength shift (RI-BWS) leads to a measurement error, whose amplitude and kinetics depend on many parameters: inscription conditions, fiber type, pre- or post-treatments, and irradiation conditions (nature, dose, dose rate, and temperature). Indeed, the radiation hardness of an FBG is not directly related to that of the fiber where it has been photo-inscribed by a laser. We review the influence of all these parameters and discuss how it is possible to manufacture FBGs with limited RI-BWS, opening the way to their implementation in radiation-rich environments.

We report here the response of a commercial ultra-low loss (ULL) single-mode (SM) pure silica core (PSC) fiber, the Vascade EX1000 fiber from Corning, associated with 0.16 dB/km losses at 1.55 µm to 40 keV X-rays at room temperature. Today, among all fiber types, the PSC or F-doped ones have been demonstrated to be the most tolerant to the radiation induced attenuation (RIA) phenomenon and are usually used to design radiation-hardened data links or fiber-based point or distributed sensors. The here investigated ULL-PSC showed, instead, surprisingly high RIA levels of ~3000 dB/km at 1310 nm and ~2000 dB/km at 1550 nm at a limited dose of 2 kGy(SiO₂), exceeding the RIA measured in the P-doped SM fibers used for dosimetry for doses of ~500 Gy. Moreover, its RIA increased as a function of the dose with a saturation tendency at larger doses and quickly recovered after irradiation. Our study on the silica structure suggests that the very specific manufacturing process of the ULL-PSC fibers applied to reduce their intrinsic attenuation makes them highly vulnerable to radiations even at low doses. From the application point of view, this fiber cannot be used for data transfer or sensing in harsh environments, except as a very efficient radiation detector or beam monitor.

In this work, we developed and exploited simulation tools to optimize the performances of rare earth doped fiber amplifiers (REDFAs) for space missions. To describe these systems, a state-of-the-art model based on the rate equations and the particle swarm optimization technique is developed in which we also consider the main radiation effect on REDFA: the radiation induced attenuation (RIA). After the validation of this tool set by confrontation between theoretical and experimental results, we investigate how the deleterious radiation effects on the amplifier performance can be mitigated following adequate strategies to conceive the REDFA architecture. The tool set was validated by comparing the calculated Erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) gain degradation under X-rays at ∼300 krad(SiO₂) with the corresponding experimental results. Two versions of the same fibers were used in this work, a standard optical fiber and a radiation hardened fiber, obtained by loading the previous fiber with hydrogen gas. Based on these fibers, standard and radiation hardened EDFAs were manufactured and tested in different operating configurations, and the obtained data were compared with simulation data done considering the same EDFA structure and fiber properties. This comparison reveals a good agreement between simulated gain and experimental data (<10% as the maximum error for the highest doses). Compared to our previous results obtained on Er/Yb-amplifiers, these results reveal the importance of the photo-bleaching mechanism competing with the RIA that cannot be neglected for the modeling of the radiation-induced gain degradation of EDFAs. This implies to measure in representative conditions the RIA at the pump and signal wavelengths that are used as input parameters for the simulation. The validated numerical codes have then been used to evaluate the potential of some EDFA architecture evolutions in the amplifier performance during the space mission. Optimization of both the fiber length and the EDFA pumping scheme allows us to strongly reduce its radiation vulnerability in terms of gain. The presented approach is a complementary and effective tool for hardening by device techniques and opens new perspectives for the applications of REDFAs and lasers in harsh environments.

Optical fibers hold promise for accurate dosimetry in small field proton therapy due to their superior spatial resolution and the lack of significant Cerenkov contamination in proton beams. One known drawback for most scintillation detectors is signal quenching in areas of high linear energy transfer, as is the case in the Bragg peak region of a proton beam. In this study, we investigated the potential of innovative optical fiber bulk materials using the sol-gel technique for dosimetry in proton therapy. This type of glass is made of amorphous silica (SiO $${}_{2}$$2 ) and is doped with Gd $${}^{3+}$$3 + ions and possesses very interesting light emission properties with a luminescence band around 314 nm when exposed to protons. The fibers were manufactured at the University of Lille and tested at the TRIUMF Proton Therapy facility with 8.2–62.9 MeV protons and 2–6 nA of extracted beam current. Dose-rate dependence and quenching were measured and compared to other silica-based fibers also made by sol-gel techniques and doped with Ce $${}^{3+}$$3 + and Cu $${}^{+}$$+ . The three fibers present strong luminescence in the UV (Gd) or visible (Cu,Ce) under irradiation, with the emission intensities related directly to the proton flux. In addition, the 0.5 mm diameter Gd $${}^{3+}$$3 + -doped fiber shows superior resolution of the Bragg peak, indicating significantly reduced quenching in comparison to the Ce $${}^{3+}$$3 + and Cu $${}^{+}$$+ fibers with a Birks’ constant, k $${}_{B}$$B , of (0.0162 $$\pm $$± 0.0003) cm/MeV in comparison to (0.0333 $$\pm $$± 0.0006) cm/MeV and (0.0352 $$\pm $$± 0.0003) cm/MeV, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first report of such an interesting k $${}_{B}$$B for a silica-based optical fiber material, showing clearly that this fiber presents lower quenching than common plastic scintillators. This result demonstrates the high potential of this inorganic fiber material for proton therapy dosimetry.

We investigated the nature, optical properties, and decay kinetics of point defects causing large transient attenuation increase observed in silica-based optical fibers exposed to short duration and high-dose rate x-ray pulses. The transient radiation-induced attenuation (RIA) spectra of pure-silica-core (PSC), Ge-doped, F-doped, and Ge + F-doped optical fibers (OFs) were acquired after the ionizing pulse in the spectral range of [∼0.8–∼3.2] eV (∼1500–∼380 nm), from a few ms to several minutes after the pulse, at both room temperature (RT) and liquid nitrogen temperature (LNT). Comparing the fiber behavior at both temperatures better highlights the thermally unstable point defects contribution to the RIA. The transient RIA origin and decay kinetics are discussed on the basis of already-known defects absorbing in the investigated spectral range. These measurements reveal the importance of intrinsic metastable defects such as self-trapped holes (STHs), not only for PSC and F-doped fibers but also for germanosilicate optical fibers as clearly evidenced by our LNT measurements. Furthermore, our results show that fluorine co-doping seems to decrease the RIA related to the strain-assisted STHs absorption bands in both types of optical fibers. Regarding Ge-doped glasses, besides a description of the defects responsible of the RIA, highlighting the STHs' role in their transient response, we provide a clear correlation between the GeX and GeY centers’ kinetics. In conclusion, the presented results improve our understanding of the transient RIA origin in the ultraviolet and visible domains. The lack of knowledge about the defects causing the RIA in the near-infrared domain will require future studies.