Inner cladding influence on large mode area photonic crystal fiber properties under severe heat load

Abstract

Constant innovations of fiber technology over the last twenty years has fueled a huge improvement of the performances of fiber lasers. Further power scaling of fiber lasers is currently hindered by the phenomenon of transverse mode instabilities, a sudden deterioration of output beam quality occurring beyond a certain power threshold due to energy transfer from the fiber fundamental mode to high-order modes. Several studies have pinpointed a thermal origin for this phenomenon. A possible solution is to implement fiber designs capable of providing a robust single-mode operation even under severe heat load, in order to prevent such coupling. In this paper the effects on the propagating modes of the change of the inner cladding size and microstructuration in double-cladding photonic crystal fibers under heating condition are discussed, and related to field confinement and single-mode regime.