Bromine doping of silica glass is demonstrated. Bromine doping can be achieved with SiBr.sub.4 as a precursor. Bromine doping can occur during heating, consolidation or sintering of a porous silica glass body. Doping concentrations of bromine increase with increasing pressure of the doping precursor and can be modeled with a power law equation in which doping concentration is proportional to the square root of the pressure of the doping precursor. Bromine is an updopant in silica and the relative refractive index of silica increases approximately linearly with doping concentration. Bromine can be used as a dopant for optical fibers and can be incorporated in the core and/or cladding regions. Core doping concentrations of bromine are sufficient to permit use of undoped silica as an inner cladding material in fibers having a trench in the refractive index profile. Co-doping of silica glass with bromine and chlorine is also demonstrated.

An optical fiber having a core comprising silica and greater than 1.5 wt % chlorine and less than 0.5 wt % F, said core having a refractive index .sub.1MAX, and a inner cladding region having refractive index .sub.2MIN surrounding the core, where .sub.1MAX>.sub.2MIN.

A single mode optical fiber having a core made from silica and less than or equal to about 6.5 weight % germania and having a maximum relative refractive index .sub.1MAX. The optical fiber also has an inner cladding surrounding the core and having a minimum relative refractive index .sub.2MIN. A difference between a softening point of the core and a softening point of the inner cladding is less than or equal to about 20 C., and .sub.1MAX>.sub.2MIN. The single mode optical fiber may also have an outer cladding surrounding the inner cladding made from silica or SiON. The outer cladding has a maximum relative refractive index .sub.3MAX, and .sub.3MAX>.sub.2MIN. A method for manufacturing an optical fiber includes providing a preform to a first furnace, the preform, drawing the optical fiber from the preform, and cooling the drawn optical fiber in a second furnace.

The present disclosure is directed to a method of making an optical fiber with improved bend performance, the optical fiber having a core and at least one cladding layer, and a chlorine content in the in the last layer of the at least one cladding layer that is greater than 500 ppm by weight. The fiber is prepared using a mixture of a carrier gas, a gaseous chlorine source material and a gaseous reducing agent during the sintering of the last or outermost layer of the at least one cladding layer. The inclusion of the reducing gas into a mixture of the carrier gas and gaseous chlorine material reduces oxygen-rich defects that results in at least a 20% reduction in TTP during hydrogen aging testing.

The present embodiment relates to an optical fiber having a W-type refractive index d profile or a trench-type refractive index profile and having reduced microbending loss in a wavelength band to be actually used. The optical fiber includes a center core, an inner cladding surrounding the center core, and an outer cladding surrounding the inner cladding. The inner cladding has a refractive index lower than a refractive index of at least the center core and the outer cladding has a refractive index lower than the refractive index of the center core and higher than the refractive index of the inner cladding. Wavelength dependency of microbending loss has a local maximal value and a shortest wavelength .sub.th where the microbending loss becomes 10% of the local maximal value is longer than 1560 nm.

An optical fiber having a core comprising silica and greater than 1.5 wt % chlorine and less than 0.5 wt % F, said core having a refractive index .sub.1MAX, and a inner cladding region having refractive index .sub.2MIN surrounding the core, where .sub.1MAX>.sub.2MIN.

This ultra-low-loss optical fiber comprises a core having a higher relative refractive index difference than silica and a cladding having a lower relative refractive index difference than silica. The relative refractive index difference of the core with respect to the refractive index of silica is 0.0030 to 0.0055, for example, and the relative refractive index difference of the cladding with respect to the refractive index of silica is 0.0020 to 0.0003. The ultra-low-loss optical fiber has the loss characteristic of simultaneously having optical losses of at most 0.324 dB/km at a wavelength of 1310 nm, at most 0.320 dB/km at a wavelength of 1383 nm, at most 0.184 dB/km at a wavelength of 1550 nm, and at most 0.20 dB/km at a wavelength of 1625 nm. The ultra-low-loss optical fiber is supercooled when the surface temperature of the optical fiber has a temperature range in a glass transition section during drawing.