A device to characterize optical fibres

TL;DR

This paper presents a specialized instrument designed to measure light yield and attenuation length in optical fibers, achieving high accuracy and aiding quality control in large fiber samples for particle physics experiments.

Contribution

Introduction of a dedicated device for precise optical fiber characterization, improving measurement accuracy and efficiency in quality control processes.

Findings

Achieved 1.5% accuracy in light yield measurement

Achieved 3% accuracy in attenuation length measurement

Successfully applied the instrument to large fiber samples

Abstract

ATLAS is a general purpose experiment approved for the LHC collider at CERN. An important component of the detector is the central hadronic calorimeter; for its construction more than 600,000 Wave Length Shifting (WLS) fibres (corresponding to a total length of 1,120 Km) have been used. We have built and put into operation a dedicated instrument for the measurement of light yield and attenuation length over groups of 20 fibres at a time. The overall accuracy achieved in the measurement of light yield (attenuation length) is 1.5% (3%). We also report the results obtained using this method in the quality control of a large sample of fibres.