We demonstrate the first soft-glass hollow core photonic crystal fiber. The fiber is made from a high-index lead-silicate glass (Schott SF6, refractive index 1.82 at 500 nm). Fabricated by the stack-and-draw technique, the fiber incorporates a 7-cell hollow core embedded in a highly uniform 6-layer cladding structure that resembles a kagome-like lattice. Effective single mode guidance of light is observed from 750 to 1050 nm in a large mode area (core diameter similar to 30 mu m) with a low loss of 0.74 dB/m. The underlying guidance mechanism of the fiber is investigated using finite element modeling. The fiber is promising for applications requiring single mode guidance in a large mode area, such as particle guidance, fluid and gas filled devices. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America
Contact
Research Group Francesco Tani
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light Staudtstr. 2 91058 Erlangen, Germany
