A catastrophic effect in which a local hot spot, from a dirty splice, end face or bend, heats the core until it absorbs strongly and turns into a tiny plasma. The plasma travels back toward the source at around a meter per second, fed by the guided light, destroying the core as it goes. It keeps going until power drops below about 1 to 2 W in standard singlemode fiber, so a fuse can eat meters of fiber unless the source shuts down.
Saw the bright spot crawling back along the delivery fiber, that's a fiber fuse, kill the pumps.
Also heard as
- fuse effect
Related terms
Damage threshold
The maximum fluence or power density an optic can take before it is permanently damaged.
Hot spot
A small region of a beam with much higher intensity than the rest, a common cause of optic damage.
Fiber laser
A laser whose gain medium is an optical fiber with a rare-earth-doped core, pumped by diodes.
Fried
Lab slang for a laser diode, optic, coating or detector that has been destroyed by too much light or current.