Generation of Megawatt Optical Solitons in Hollow-Core Photonic Band-Gap Fibers

Abstract

The measured dispersion of a low-loss, hollow-core photonic band-gap fiber is anomalous throughout most of the transmission band, and its variation with wavelength is large compared with that of a conventional step-index fiber. For an air-filled fiber, femtosecond self-frequency--shifted fundamental solitons with peak powers greater than 2megawatts can be supported. For Xe-filled fibers, nonfrequency-shifted temporal solitons with peak powers greater than 5.5 megawatts can be generated, representing an increase in the power that can be propagated in an optical fiber of two orders of magnitude. The results demonstrate a unique capability to deliver high-power pulses in a single spatial mode over distances exceeding 200 meters.

Theory of the soliton self-frequency shift compensation by the resonant radiation in photonic crystal fibers

“…For example, in silica core PCFs nonlinearity can be enhanced by the small modal area and group velocity dispersion (GVD) can be controlled by the engineering of the photonic crystal cladding [6,7]. The hollow-core band-gap guiding PCFs can be filled with different gases and used for a variety of nonlinear optical experiments in the low loss and diffraction free geometries with very long interaction distances [8][9][10].…”

Revolver Hollow Core Optical Fibers

“…Nevertheless, in the absence of evacuation at sufficiently long interaction lengths of the radiation with the gaseous medium, the nonlinear properties of the gas can exert a strong influence on the spectral-temporal characteristics of powerful ultrashort pulses [18,[71][72][73][74][75].…”

“…The propagation of femtosecond pulses in a photonic crystal fiber with a hollow core filled with atmospheric air was studied in [74]. The 2.4 MW pulse with a spectrum shifted to the long-wavelength edge of the band was obtained at the fiber output, when a 110-fs pulse with 900-nJ energy at a wavelength of 1470 nm, was launched into a three-m-long fiber.…”

Hollow-core photonic crystal fibre for high power laser beam delivery

“…However, recently, Wheeler et al demonstrated that Kagome HC-PCF could be spliced with comparable splice loss to that of PBG guiding ones, provided the HC-PCF is tapered [43] . Bandgap HC-PCF also finds applications in soliton generation [14] and pulse compression [44] . As a host for light-matter interactions [16,17] , which is one of the most advanced applications of HC-PCF, bandgap HC-PCF can enhance the interaction intensity by up to a millionfold because of its small core size and low optical attenuation.…”