Revolver Hollow Core Optical Fibers

Abstract

Revolver optical fibers (RF) are special type of hollow-core optical fibers with negative curvature of the core-cladding boundary and with cladding that is formed by a one ring layer of capillaries. The physical mechanisms contributing to the waveguiding parameters of RFs are discussed. The optical properties and possible applications of RFs are reviewed. Special attention is paid to the mid-IR hydrogen Raman lasers that are based on RFs and generating in the wavelength region from 2.9 to 4.4 μm.

Borosilicate Based Hollow-Core Optical Fibers

“…All these factors make the overall equipment cost for fiber drawing significantly lower than what is needed for silica glass. Furthermore, purchased borosilicate glass tubes and rods used for the preform preparation of HCs [2] do not need to be prepared through refined glass preform processes (as Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition, MCVD) or extra purification steps [18], which would also add some relevant cost to the finalized product.…”

“…The fabricated fibers were produced in lengths of several hundred meters, and they were coated with a standard Desolite 3471-3-14 fiber coating, applied through an unpressurized coating system with optimized concentricity. The HC fiber preforms were made by the conventional stack and draw technique [2]. The typical diameter for the starting preform was 19 mm, which was drawn to a cane diameter of few mm.…”

“…Hollow-core optical fibers (HCs) have recently gained significant interest to a large scientific community [1]. Within the last six years, a novel form of hollow-core optical fiber has been developed, which consists in a simplified HC where a set of detached tubes surrounds a central air core [2][3][4]. The development of this fiber structure has led to the demonstration of attenuation below 10 dB/km [5], and the insertion within this same structure of additional anti-resonant elements (first proposed in [6]) is expected to reduce their attenuation even below 1 dB/km [7].…”

“…Simplified anti-resonant HC structures have already been adopted to make HCs with chalcogenide glasses [2,12] and polymers [13]. Indeed, the use of nonsilica glasses for HCs may allow to further reduce the attenuation of silica-based HCs in the mid-infrared spectral range [14] and beyond by exploiting their lowest light absorption at long wavelengths.…”

Hollow-Core Optical Fibers

“…The review Revolver Hollow-Core Optical Fibers [12] by the Fiber Optics Research Center (FORC), in Moscow, focuses on their specific simplified designs (HCs with only a single ring of tubular tubes in the cladding area), first pioneered and developed in their institution. Most properties, applications and fabrication approaches of this specific fiber type are addressed and discussed in all spectral domains.…”