Abstract
Ever since low-loss optical fibers and laser diodes were developed, rapid progress has been made in the fields of optical systems and devices, such as long-distance oprical transmission, optical sensors, optical compact disks, and so on. However, future applications of optical technology requires more functional devices than have already developed at present, like optical memories, wavelength converters, optical amplifiers, etc. Single-crysal fibers offer great capabilities in a variety of such functional devices because of an unique combination of material properties and waveguide geometry unavailable in either glass optical fibers or bulk single crystals. This paper desctibes the growth and applications of single-crystal fibers.
