The use of optical fibers in astronomical instrumentation has been becoming more and more common. High transmission, polarization control, compact and easy routing are just a few of the advantages in this respect. But fibers also bring new challenges for the development of systems. During the assembly of the VLTI beam combiner GRAVITY different side effects of the fiber implementation had to be taken into account. In this work we summarize the corresponding phenomena ranging from the external factors influencing the fiber performance, like mechanical and temperature effects, to inelastic scattering within the fiber material.

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Magdalena Lippa, Stefan Gillessen, Nicolas Blind, Yitping Kok, Karine Perraut, Laurent Jocou, Frank Eisenhauer, Oliver Pfuhl, Marcus Haug, Stefan Kellner, Frank Haußmann, Markus Plattner, Christian Rau, Oliver Hans, Ekkehard Wieprecht, Thomas Ott, Erich Wiezorrek, Eckhard Sturm, Alexander Buron, Sylvestre Lacour, Reinhard Genzel, Guy Perrin, Wolfgang Brandner, Christian Straubmeier, and Antonio Amorim, "Learnings from the use of fiber optics in GRAVITY," Proc. SPIE 10701, Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging VI, 107011Y (Presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation: June 15, 2018; Published: 9 July 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2312477.