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Meet a Scientist: Dr. Cliff Headley

When faced with the question of how to take laser light, amplify it, and get it from here to there, scientists typically take one of two primary approaches—send it through free space or route it through an optical fiber. As is the case with advanced scientific study, there are difficulties that must be resolved with either solution. With free space optics, there are challenges for cooling, ruggedness, and stability of the output beam. With all-fiber devices—those which Dr. Headley is currently developing—there are different challenges, “or else I would be out of a job,” he says, half jokingly. When we put these significant amounts of power into the small core of a long length of fiber, the problems Dr. Headley is working on solving include coupling in the required pump and signal power and dealing with deleterious nonlinear effects. His efforts to address these issues using various types and combinations of rare earth dopants and fiber Bragg gratings, he hopes, will result in applications especially for the military, contracts with various U.S. Government agencies, in medicine (such as for laser surgery), micromachining, and industrial welding and marking.

But he’s not alone. Cliff combines his duties as a lab scientist with the responsibilities of being a Technical Manager at OFS Labs, where “there are a bunch of smart people with reasonable egos,” no small compliment for a research facility with some of the brightest minds in the business. In a field where he calls part of the excitement “trying to be the first to get some result, and the thrill of seeing my name on a published paper,” Cliff credits his colleagues with pushing him without feeling like he is competing internally and making him “a better scientist than I would otherwise be.”

Dr. Headley is a prolific researcher and publisher at OFS Labs, and—in addition to the wonderful support he enjoys from his team at the Labs—he got where he is by way of Electric Engineering degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington and his doctorate in Optics from the University of Rochester. He hails from the Bahamas, and together with his Brazilian wife, Ana, has two young sons, and a thing for soccer.

Dr. Timothy Murray
Named CEO of OFS

New Journal Article to be Published
What is the upper use temperature for specialty optical fibers? Can they function indefinitely at 100°C? What about 200°C or 300°C? Demand is increasing for fibers that can be used in high-temperature applications, such as high-power delivery for medical surgery, fiber lasers for metal cutting, and downhole temperature sensing in oil wells. Optical fiber performance under these conditions has not been sufficiently understood. Silica, itself, can survive exceptionally high temperatures. It is, instead, the various coatings we apply to the glass to protect it from other elements and conditions than heat that limit its functionality under extreme temperatures. A white paper, by Andrei Stolov, Debra Simoff, and Jie Li, all scientists from the Specialty Photonics Division in Avon, Connecticut, and entitled “Thermal Stability of Specialty Optical Fibers,” has been accepted for publication in the August, 2008 issue of the Journal of Lightwave Technology. In their work, they clarify the concept of thermal stability, and based on the results, estimate the long-term use temperatures for various specialty optical fibers.

Now Where Did I Put That Brochure?
We've made some changes to SpecialtyPhotonics.com recently that hopefully haven’t reminded you of getting older and losing your keys. We’ve moved all of our customer brochures to one location under Customer Support/Brochures. The newest ones are first, and the rest follow by popularity. Website Improvements >>