CERN selects Fujikura's radiation resistant fiber

APRIL 17, 2007 -- Fujikura Europe Ltd. (search for Fujikura Europe) today announced that its radiation resistant singlemode optical fiber has been selected by CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, to provide communication links within the world's largest particle accelerator--the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)--near Geneva, Switzerland.

Fujikura will supply 2,500 km of fiber to collect beam instrumentation data from the LHC. To provide reliable communications, the fiber must be able to withstand localized radiation levels of up to 20 kGy/year, which is enough to cause radiation-induced attenuation in normal optical fiber.

"Fujikura's radiation resistant fiber will allow us to gather data consistently from the LHC collimator and beam cleaning zones where radiation is at its highest," explains Luit Koert de Jonge at CERN. "We have set ourselves a November 2007 deadline for the LHC to be operational and therefore needed a reliable partner to provide this core element, which is an essential part of our communications network."

Additionally, Fujikura supplied over 100 km of radiation resistant 12-way multimode ribbon fiber for data readout within the ATLAS inner detector. The location of the fiber is close to the beam pipe and expected to receive a maximum dose of 300kGy (Si).

"We have tested samples of the same Fujikura fibre up to much larger doses," reports Dr. Tony Weidberg of Oxford University, who is working at CERN. "In fact, we found only a very small increase in attenuation, about 0.03db/m for a dose up to 1.4 MGy(Si)."  

"As nuclear research becomes increasingly important to our understanding of the universe, technology must be developed to allow the ground-breaking experiments conducted by organizations like CERN to take place," adds Robert Walker, business development manager at Fujikura Europe Ltd. "To provide a fiber that can withstand such high levels of radiation is an achievement of which we are extremely proud. We will continue to develop speciality fibers that are able to provide reliable communications links in the most extreme environments," he says.