Cladding defects in hollow core fibers for surface mode suppression and improved birefringence.

We demonstrate a novel polarization maintaining hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber geometry that reduces the impact of surface modes on fiber transmission. The cladding structure is modified with a row of partially collapsed holes to strip away unwanted surface modes. A theoretical investigation of the surface mode stripping is presented and compared to the measured performance of four 7-cells core fibers that were drawn with different collapse ratio of the defects. The varying pressure along the defect row in the cladding during drawing introduces an ellipticity of the core. This, combined with the presence of antiresonant features on the core wall, makes the fibers birefringent, with excellent polarization maintaining properties.

Nineteen-port photonic lantern with multimode delivery fiber.

We demonstrate efficient multimode (MM) to single-mode (SM) conversion in a 19-port photonic lantern with a 50 µm core MM delivery fiber. The photonic lantern can be used within the field of astrophotonics for coupling MM starlight to an ensemble of SM fibers in order to perform fiber-Bragg-grating-based spectral filtering. An MM delivery fiber spliced to the photonic lantern offers the advantage that the delivery fiber guides the light from the focal plane of the telescope to the splitter. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to have the splitter mounted directly in the focal plane of the telescope. The coupling loss from a 50 µm core MM fiber to an ensemble of 19 SM fibers and back to a 50 µm core MM fiber is below 1.1 dB.

Cross-validation of theoretically quantified fiber continuum generation and absolute pulse measurement by MIIPS for a broadband coherently controlled optical source.

The predicted spectral phase of a fiber continuum pulsed source rigorously quantified by the scalar generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation is found to be in excellent agreement with that measured by multiphoton intra-pulse interference phase scan (MIIPS) with background subtraction. This cross-validation confirms the absolute pulse measurement by MIIPS and the transform-limited compression of the fiber continuum pulses by the pulse shaper performing the MIIPS measurement, and permits the subsequent coherent control on the fiber continuum pulses by this pulse shaper. The combination of the fiber continuum source with the MIIPS-integrated pulse shaper produces compressed transform-limited 9.6 fs (FWHM) pulses or arbitrarily shaped pulses at a central wavelength of 1020 nm, an average power over 100 mW, and a repetition rate of 76 MHz. In comparison to the 229-fs pump laser pulses that generate the fiber continuum, the compressed pulses reflect a compression ratio of 24.

Mode field diameter preserving fiber tapers.

An approach for preserving the mode field diameter (MFD) in fiber tapers is demonstrated. The approach utilizes concentric dual-core fibers, which couple light from an inner core to an outer core through a taper. Fibers with a 6 µm MFD feedthrough and a 15 µm polarization maintaining feedthrough are demonstrated experimentally. Simulations of the MFD in the tapered dual-core fibers are also presented.

Multi-mode to single-mode conversion in a 61 port Photonic Lantern.

Efficient multi-mode (MM) to single-mode (SM) conversion in a 61 port splitter or "Photonic Lantern" is demonstrated. The coupling loss from a 100 microm core diameter MM section to an ensemble of 61 SM fibers and back to another 100 microm core MM section is measured to be as low as 0.76 dB. This demonstration shows the feasibility of using the Photonic Lanterns within the field of astrophotonics for coupling MM star-light to an ensemble of SM fibers in order to perform fiber Bragg grating based spectral filtering.

Dispersive pulse compression in hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers.

Compression of linearly chirped picosecond pulses in hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers is investigated numerically. The modal properties of the fibers are modeled using the finite-element technique, whereas nonlinear propagation is described by a generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation, which accounts both for the composite nature of the nonlinearity and the strong mode profile dispersion. Power limits for compression with more than 90% of the pulse energy in the main peak of the compressed pulse are investigated as a function of fiber design, and the temporal and spectral widths of the input pulse. The validity of approximate scaling rules is investigated, and figures of merit for fiber design are discussed.

Confinement loss spectral behavior in hollow-core Bragg fibers.

The influence of each cross-section geometric parameter on hollow-core Bragg fiber guiding properties has been numerically investigated. Fabricated fibers have been modeled, giving insight into the spectral behavior of the confinement loss. It has been verified that, by changing the amount of silica and air in the fiber cladding, it is possible to change the reflection conditions undergone by the field within the core, thus shifting the confinement loss spectrum.

Directional coupling in twin-core photonic bandgap fibers.

The frequency dependence of the coupling length in a twin-core photonic bandgap fiber is investigated numerically. In contrast to the case of index-guiding fibers, the coupling length exhibits a maximum if the cores are sufficiently well separated. The fiber design proposed is of interest for fabricating broadband tunable couplers.

Hole trapping at Al impurities in silica: a challenge for density functional theories.

The atomic geometry and electronic structure around a neutral substitutional Al impurity in silica is investigated using either the unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) approximation, or Beckes three-parameter hybrid functional (B3LYP). It is found that the B3LYP functional fails to describe the structural distortions around the Al impurity, while the UHF results are consistent with experimental information. We argue that the failure of the B3LYP functional is caused by the incomplete self-interaction cancellation usually present in density functional theories.