Broadband optical pulse scattering from a glass fiber

Abstract

We report results of scattering measurements using femtosecond pulses to collect a wealth of information in a single experiment. Potential issues with particle scattering, such as variation in particle size, were avoided by using 9 and 50 microm diameter glass fibers. We first establish an angular scattering intensity baseline, and we show that the spectral width of very short pulses leads to smoothing of the angular scattering pattern, consistent with continuous broadband illumination. We then measure the angular scattering pattern from short pulses with a spectrometer and reveal an underlying spectral periodicity of broadband scattered light that is consistent with narrowband cw scattering. Our experimental results compare well with existing theory. We show that such two-dimensional experimental data and derived analytic solution can provide robust characterization of scattering objects even in the presence of noise.