Spectral losses of unclad fibers made from high-grade vitreous silica

Spectral loss measurements performed between 0.5 and 1.15 μm with up to 32-m-long unclad fibers drawn from Suprasil W1, Spectrosil WF, and Corning 7943 synthetic vitreous silica demonstrated that bulk glasses with total losses well below 10 dB/km at certain wavelengths of interest for future optical communication systems are already commercially available. Lowest losses of 4 dB/km at 0.90 μm and 2.5 dB/km at 1.06 μm were obtained with one of the samples evaluated.