Customer Reviews

Fiber Bragg Gratings (Optics and Photonics)

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Fiber Bragg Gratings have been the subject of an enormous body of research particularly following the first demonstration of holographic writing of gratings in 1989. The devices have become much more important than other areas of photosensitivity in fiber, for example second harmonic generation, and promise considerably more to technology. This rapid take up of devices is well described in the text.

Raman Kashyap has put together a highly commendable text-book on the subject. It begins with a brief history and basics of fiber, then deals with the photosensitive mechanisms of the host materials. The various techniques of grating production are described in considerable detail and with more than adequate back referencing to the original papers. This is then followed by a comprehensive coverage of the theory related to Bragg gratings. Clearly the book is aimed at the graduate research student, industrial researcher and applications engineer, with sufficient material in one text to allow even the more inexperienced to understand the basics of operation. With an understanding of this the reader can design his own applications.

Refinement of the gratings is covered in a chapter on apodization and applications are dealt with selectively in chapters on band pass filters, chirped devices and grating lasers and amplifiers. This very readable book is then rounded off in a final chapter dealing with the characterisation of Bragg gratings.

I highly recommend this book. It is written by one of the pioneers of the field. It has a text- book feel but is easily read and can be lifted and opened at any chapter. Clearly the expert need not read through it sequentially. There is considerable back referencing to the many original papers and numerous diverse applications of all sorts of grating variations. I am sure any research group with even marginal interest in the subject will have this in their group library if not personal copies. Applications engineers will find it indispensable.

A review of this book can really only be given in comparison to the only other book on the subject at this time, "Fiber Bragg Gratings: Fundamentals and Applications in Telecommunications and Sensing," by Othonos and Kalli.

This book is rather thick on theory at the expense of the applications of Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs). Having said that, if you are after detailed theory, specifically for the "Apodization of Fiber Gratings" (chapter 5), "Fiber Grating Band-pass Filters" (chapter 6), or "Chirped Fiber Bragg Gratings" (chapter 7), this book will be of interest to you. As someone who was interested in a concise theory section, and details of applications to date, I should have just stuck with Othonos and Kalli's book. The only other application section in the book is chapter 8 "Fiber Grating Lasers and Amplifiers." The FBG as a sensor is not mentioned any where in this book (chapter 3 has a very small section dedicated to the "tuning of the Bragg wavelength." Hence, if you are working with FBG sensors, this book is not for you, again, Othonos and Kalli would be much better. Obviously chapter 6 includes some of the communications applications of FBGs but this is quite narrow in scope.

Overall, the first four chapters (not including the introduction) do a good job at covering the theory of FBGs in a way that means you would not need to look up the references. However, the final four chapters leave me wanting more on applications (or wishing I had bought the book second hand for less, but that is a personal opinion of someone working on FBG sensors).

So, I would have preferred to have just bought Othonos and Kalli. But this may be of use to some in the area.

My final though is that Kashyap does appear to have written a book which feels more like a text book, were as Othonos and Kalli has the feel of an edited collection of some 700+ references. But as a reference book I personally prefer the second.

Regards,

Having read this book I feel that the author has over emphasised certain aspects, e.g. the theory at the expense of applications. The impression is that the series editors have encouraged the writing of a text book, filling many pages with information that is not readily useful to the researcher or industrial scientist