Anti-resonant hollow-core fibers featuring support structures
AssigneeUniversity of Central Florida Research Foundation, Inc.
InventorsRodrigo Amezcua-Correa, Jose Enrique Antonio-Lopez, Stephanos Yerolatsitis
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Abstract
An optical fiber may include a cladding structure extending along a fiber length providing a hollow interior fiber region, and anti-resonant (AR) elements formed as walled structures with walls extending along the fiber length. At least one of the AR elements surrounds an interior region and further includes one or more support structures in the interior region and formed as at least a portion of at least one of the walls, where the one or more support structures have a non-uniform thickness profile, and where the plurality AR elements is configured to guide light along the fiber length in a central portion of the hollow interior fiber region based on optical anti-resonance.
Claims22
An anti-resonant hollow-core optical fiber (AR-HCF) comprising:
- one or more cladding structures extending along a length of the AR-HCF providing a hollow interior fiber region;
- a first set of nested anti-resonant (AR) elements formed as a first distribution of two or more walled structures with walls extending along the length of the AR-HCF, wherein the first set of nested AR elements is distributed around and exclusively in contact with the one or more cladding structures, wherein all constituent AR elements of a particular one of first set of nested AR elements are in contact at a first contact point;
- and
- a second set of nested AR elements formed as a second distribution of two or more walled structures extending along the length of the AR-HCF, wherein the second set of nested AR elements is distributed around and exclusively in contact with the one or more cladding structures and interleaved with the first set of nested AR elements, wherein all constituent AR elements of a particular one of the second set of nested AR elements are in contact at a second contact point, wherein an outer dimension of the first set of nested AR elements is larger than an outer dimension of the second set of nested AR elements, wherein the first set of nested AR elements and the second set of nested AR elements each include at least five sets of nested AR elements, wherein the second set of nested AR elements are in an alternating arrangement with the first set of nested AR elements to supplement confinement of light in the hollow interior fiber region by the first set of nested AR elements through optical antiresonance.
A method comprising:
- fabricating a nested-element preform by:
- fabricating a cladding preform including a hollow interior preform region;
- fabricating a first set of nested anti-resonant (AR) preform elements distributed around walls of the hollow interior preform region;
- and
- fabricating a second set of nested AR preform elements distributed around the walls of the hollow interior preform region and interleaved with the first set of nested AR preform elements, wherein the first set of nested AR elements and the second set of nested AR elements each include at least five sets of nested AR elements;
- and
- drawing the nested-element preform into an AR hollow-core optical fiber (AR-HCF), wherein the AR-HCF comprises:
- a cladding structure associated with the cladding preform, wherein the cladding structure extends along a length of the AR-HCF providing a hollow interior fiber region;
- a first set of nested anti-resonant (AR) elements associated with the first set of nested AR preform elements, wherein the first set of nested AR elements are formed as walled structures with walls extending along the length of the AR-HCF, wherein the first set of nested AR elements is distributed around and in contact with a wall of the hollow interior fiber region;
- and
- a second set of nested AR elements associated with the second set of nested AR preform elements, wherein the second set of nested AR elements are formed as walled structures extending along the length of the AR-HCF, wherein the second set of nested AR elements is distributed around and in contact with the wall of the hollow interior fiber region and interleaved with the first set of nested AR elements, wherein an outer dimension of the first set of nested AR elements is larger than an outer dimension of the second set of nested AR elements, wherein the second set of nested AR elements are in an alternating arrangement with the first set of nested AR elements to supplement confinement of light in the hollow interior fiber region by the first set of nested AR elements through optical antiresonance.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.