Abstract
In a recent publication1 it was shown that the commonly observed features in the fiber local-attenuation plots obtained by the backscatter method are associated with fiber-diameter fluctuations. In particular, it was demonstrated that propagation through a contracting taper produced a reduction in attenuation, the tapered section on occasions having an apparent negative loss. Conversely, an expanding taper exhibits a positive loss of similar magnitude. Both these effects are the reverse of that which might be intuitively expected. Figure 1 shows the measured backscatter power and local attenuation for the two cases. We have now isolated the mechanism which causes these apparent anomalies and present here a theoretical and experimental explanation.
© 1981 Optical Society of America
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