Fiber Optics Frontiers: Early-Career Tech Talks
This webinar is hosted By: Fiber Optics Technology and Applications Technical Group
05 November 2026 11:00 - 12:00
Eastern Time (US & Canada) (UTC -05:00)
Fiber Optics Frontiers: Early-Career Tech Talks” will feature three topics highlighting recent advances in fiber-optic technologies, covering hollow-core fibers, fiber Bragg gratings for fiber lasers, and fiber-optic devices for astronomical instrumentation. The first talk introduces a unified physical framework for understanding confinement loss in inhibited-coupling hollow-core fibers. It shows how this perspective connects anti-resonant and inhibited-coupling models and can guide the design of advanced fiber geometries, such as nested-tube fibers, for lower transmission loss.
The second topic highlights ultrashort pulse-inscribed fiber Bragg gratings for fiber laser applications. By exploring advanced use cases, from high-power durability to enabling new wavelength ranges, their advantages are discussed, and new perspectives are offered. The third topic will present a multi-input photonic lantern device developed for E-MARCOT, the European Multi-Array of Combined Telescopes. This device will act as a multiplexer, combining light from multiple telescopes into a single fiber to be fed into a high-resolution spectrograph. At the end of the three talks, there will be a Q&A with the presenters on technical and professional development topics.
Subject Matter Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of the topic
What You Will Learn:
• Talk 1: Hollow core photonic crystal fiber: the anatomy of confinement loss and more.
• Talk 2: Ultrashort laser pulse-inscribed fiber Bragg gratings and new opportunities for designing advanced fiber laser systems.
• Talk 3: Advanced photonic lanterns: connecting arrays of telescopes to precision instruments.
Who Should Attend:
Researchers interested in the following areas:
• Hollow-core photonic crystal fibers, loss analysis
• Fiber lasers, FBGs
• Photonic lanterns, astronomical instrumentation
About the Presenters:
Marina Centenera Merino from Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain
Marina Centenera is a PhD student at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain. Her research focuses on the fabrication and characterization of photonic lanterns and their application in telescopes for exoplanet detection in observational astronomy.
Ria Krämer from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
Ria Krämer is a researcher at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. She is an expert in the ultrashort pulse inscription of fiber Bragg gratings, with her work ranging from developing robust FBGs for kilowatt-class output powers to tailored dispersion designs for quantum applications.
Federico Melli from the University of Parma, Italy
Dr. Federico Melli is a researcher at the University of Parma, Italy. His research focuses on modeling and optimization of Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fibers, with recent contributions in developing unified analytical frameworks for suppressing confinement loss in next-generation fibers.
