Ultrabroad coherent comb-like optical spectra spanning several octaves are a chief ingredient in the emerging field of attoscience. We demonstrate generation and guidance of a three-octave spectral comb, spanning wavelengths from 325 to 2300 nanometers, in a hydrogen-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. The waveguidance results not from a photonic band gap but from the inhibited coupling between the core and cladding modes. The spectrum consists of up to 45 high-order Stokes and anti-Stokes lines and is generated by driving the confined gas with a single, moderately powerful (10-kilowatt) infrared laser, producing 12-nanosecond-duration pulses. This represents a reduction by six orders of magnitude in the required laser powers over previous equivalent techniques and opens up a robust and much simplified route to synthesizing attosecond pulses.

We report the fabrication and characterization of a new type of hollow-core photonic crystal fiber based on large-pitch (approximately 12 microm) kagome lattice cladding. The optical characteristics of the 19-cell, 7-cell, and single-cell core defect fibers include broad optical transmission bands covering the visible and near-IR parts of the spectrum with relatively low loss and low chromatic dispersion, no detectable surface modes and high confinement of light in the core. Various applications of such a novel fiber are also discussed, including gas sensing, quantum optics, and high harmonic generation.

High harmonic generation (HHG) of intense infrared laser radiation [1,2] enables coherent vacuum-UV (VUV) to soft-X-ray sources. In the usual setup, energetic femtosecond laser pulses are strongly focused into a gas jet, restricting the interaction length to the Rayleigh range of the focus. The average photon flux is limited by the low conversion efficiency and the low average power of the complex laser amplifier systems [3][4][5][6] which typically operate at kilohertz repetition rates. This represents a severe limitation for many experiments using the harmonic radiation in fields such as metrology or high-resolution imaging. Driving HHG with novel high-power diode-pumped multi-megahertz laser systems has the potential to significantly increase the average photon flux. However, the higher average power comes at the expense of lower pulse energies because the repetition rate is increased by more than a thousand times, and efficient HHG is not possible in the usual geometry. So far, two promising techniques for HHG at lower pulse energies were developed: external build-up cavities [7,8] and

We report a set of experimental observations on electromagnetically induced transparency in acetylene filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber, involving both Lambda-type and V-type interactions over several lines of the R-branch of the nu1 + nu3 ro-vibrational overtone band. Transparency as high as ~70% was achieved. A theoretical account of the sources of decoherence shows that collisions with the inner wall of the fiber core and laser frequency-jitter dominate the coherence decay.

We report on what is, to our knowledge, the first cw pumped Raman fiber-gas laser based on a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber filled with hydrogen. The high efficiency of the gas-laser interaction inside the fiber allows operation in a single-pass configuration. The transmitted spectrum exhibits 99.99% of the output light at the Stokes wavelength and a pump power threshold as low as 2.25 W. The study of the Stokes emission evolution with pressure shows that highly efficient Raman amplification is still possible even at atmospheric pressure. The addition of fiber Bragg gratings to the system, creating a cavity at the Stokes wavelength, reduces the Raman threshold power below 600 mW.

We report the observation of lambda-configuration electromagnetically induced transparency as well as optical pumping in rubidium-filled kagome-structure hollow-coated-core photonic crystal fiber. We show that a polydimethylsiloxane coating of the fiber core reduces the linewidth of the transparency below that which could be expected for an uncoated fiber. The measured 6 MHz linewidth was dominated by optical broadening.

Saturated absorption spectroscopy reveals the narrowest features so far in molecular gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. The 48-68 mum core diameter of the kagome-structured fiber used here allows for 8 MHz full-width half-maximum sub-Doppler features, and its wavelength-insensitive transmission is suitable for high-accuracy frequency measurements. A fiber laser is locked to the (12)C2H2 nu(1); + nu(3) P(13) transition inside kagome fiber, and compared with frequency combs based on both a carbon nanotube fiber laser and a Cr:forsterite laser, each of which are referenced to a GPS-disciplined Rb oscillator. The absolute frequency of the measured line center agrees with those measured in power build-up cavities to within 9.3 kHz (1 sigma error), and the fractional frequency instability is less than 1.2 x 10(-11) at 1 s averaging time.

Strong cross-Kerr non-linearities have been long sought after for quantum information applications. Recent work has shown that they are intrinsically unreliable in travelling wave configurations: cavity configurations avoid this, but require knowledge of both the non-linearity and the loss. Here we present a detailed systematic study of cross-phase modulation, and absorption, in a rubidium vapour confined within a hollow-core photonic crystal fibre. Using a two-photon transition, we observe phase modulations of up to π rad with a signal power of 25 µW, corresponding to a non-linear Kerr coefficient, n2, of 0.8 × 10 −6 cm 2 /W, or 1.3 × 10 −6 rad per photon.