Photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) have attracted significant attention during the last years and much research has been devoted to develop fiber designs for various applications, hereunder tunable fiber devices. Recently, thermally and electrically tunable PCF devices based on liquid crystals (LCs) have been demonstrated. However, optical tuning of the LC PCF has until now not been demonstrated. Here we demonstrate an all-optical modulator, which utilizes a pulsed 532nm laser to modulate the spectral position of the bandgaps in a photonic crystal fiber infiltrated with a dye-doped nematic liquid crystal. We demonstrate a modulation frequency of 2kHz for a moderate pump power of 2-3mW and describe two pump pulse regimes in which there is an order of magnitude difference between the decay times.

We present a simple theoretical model of transverse mode instability in high-power rare-earth doped fiber amplifiers. The model shows that efficient power transfer between the fundamental and higher-order modes of the fiber can be induced by a nonlinear interaction mediated through the thermo-optic effect, leading to transverse mode instability. The temporal and spectral characteristics of the instability dynamics are investigated, and it is shown that the instability can be seeded by both quantum noise and signal intensity noise, while pure phase noise of the signal does not induce instability. It is also shown that the presence of a small harmonic amplitude modulation of the signal can lead to generation of higher harmonics in the output intensity when operating near the instability threshold.

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Abstract:We investigate hollow-core fibers for fiber delivery of high power ultrashort laser pulses. We use numerical techniques to design an anti-resonant hollow-core fiber having one layer of non-touching tubes to determine which structures offer the best optical properties for the delivery of high power picosecond pulses. A novel fiber with 7 tubes and a core of 30µm was fabricated and it is here described and characterized, showing remarkable low loss, low bend loss, and good mode quality. Its optical properties are compared to both a 10µm and a 18µm core diameter photonic band gap hollow-core fiber. The three fibers are characterized experimentally for the delivery of 22 picosecond pulses at 1032nm. We demonstrate flexible, diffraction limited beam delivery with output average powers in excess of 70W. "Efficient spectral broadening in the 100-W average power regime using gas-filled kagome HC-PCF and pulse compression," Opt. Lett. 39, 6843-6846 (2014). 8. D. C. Jones, C. R. Bennett, M. a. Smith, and a. M. Scott, "High-power beam transport through a hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber," Opt. Lett. 39, 3122-3125 (2014). 9. T. P. Hansen, J. Broeng, C. Jakobsen, G. Vienne, H. R. Simonsen, M. D. Nielsen, P. M. W. Skovgaard, J. R.Folkenberg, and A. Bjarklev, "Air-guiding photonic bandgap fibers: spectral properties, macrobending loss, and practical handling," J. Light.

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