Active engineering of four-wave mixing spectral correlations in multiband hollow-core fibers.

We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally a high level of control of the four-wave mixing process in an inert gas-filled inhibited-coupling guiding hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. The specific multiple-branch dispersion profile in such fibers allows both correlated and separable bi-photon states to be produced. By controlling the choice of gas and its pressure and the fiber length, we experimentally generate various joint spectral intensity profiles in a stimulated regime that is transferable to the spontaneous regime. The generated profiles may cover both spectrally separable and correlated bi-photon states and feature frequency tuning over tens of THz, demonstrating a large dynamic control that will be very useful when implemented in the spontaneous regime as a photon pair source.

Mid IR hollow core fiber gas laser emitting at 4.6 µm.

Emission at 4.6 µm was observed from an N2O filled hollow core fiber laser. 8-ns pump pulses at 1.517 µm excited a vibrational overtone resulting in lasing on an R and P branch fundamental transition from the upper pump state. At optimum gas pressure of 80 Torr, photon conversion efficiency of 9% and slope efficiency of 3% were observed from a mirrorless laser. The laser threshold occurred at absorbed pump energy of 150 nJ in a 45-cm long fiber with 85 µm core diameter. The observed dependence of the laser output on gas pressure was shown to be a result of line broadening and relaxation rates.

Gas mixture for deep-UV plasma emission in a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber.

We report on the first deep-ultraviolet/ultraviolet (DUV/UV) emission using a highly compact microwave-driven plasma-core photonic crystal fiber. The latter consists of a few centimeter long micro-plasma column of a gas mixture in the core of Kagome hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. The plasma is generated by nonintrusively exciting a ternary gas mixture of argon, nitrogen, and oxygen (Ar/N2/O2) with a microwave resonator. Several spectral lines in the wavelength range of 200-450 nm were produced, guided by an Ar-N2-O2 plasma-filled fiber, and controlled by simply varying the gas ratio of this gas mixture. An optimum gas mixture ratio was experimentally and theoretically identified for the strongest emission in the DUV range of 200-275 nm. The developed DUV emitting plasma-core fiber represents an important milestone towards the development of tunable and miniaturized DUV/UV laser sources.

X-SEA-F-SPIDER characterization of over octave spanning pulses in the infrared range.

We show a practical implementation of a pulse characterization method for sub-cycle pulse measurements in the infrared spectral range based on spectral shearing interferometry. We employ spatially-encoded arrangement filter-based spectral phase interferometry for direct electric field reconstruction with external ancila pulses (X-SEA-F-SPIDER). We show merits and limitations of the setup and an in-depth comparison to another widely used temporal characterization technique - Second-Harmonic Generation Frequency Resolved Optical Gating (SHG-FROG). The X-SEA-F-SPIDER implementation presented in this paper allows measurement of sub-cycle pulses with over one octave wide spectrum spanning the 900-2400 nm range without adding any extra dispersion due to the pulse characterization apparatus.

CW hollow-core optically pumped I2 fiber gas laser.

Continuous wave lasing of a hollow-core fiber gas laser (HOFGLAS) is achieved with molecular iodine in the 1280-1340 nm region when optically pumped at 532 nm.

Multi-meter fiber-delivery and pulse self-compression of milli-Joule femtosecond laser and fiber-aided laser-micromachining.

We report on damage-free fiber-guidance of milli-Joule energy-level and 600-femtosecond laser pulses into hypocycloid core-contour Kagome hollow-core photonic crystal fibers. Up to 10 meter-long fibers were used to successfully deliver Yb-laser pulses in robustly single-mode fashion. Different pulse propagation regimes were demonstrated by simply changing the fiber dispersion and gas. Self-compression to ~50 fs, and intensity-level nearing petawatt/cm(2) were achieved. Finally, free focusing-optics laser-micromachining was also demonstrated on different materials.

Ultra low-loss hypocycloid-core Kagome hollow-core photonic crystal fiber for green spectral-range applications.

We report on the development of a hypocycloidal-core Kagome hollow-core photonic crystal fiber guiding, with low transmission loss in the 450-650 nm visible spectral range. Transmission loss records have been achieved with 70 dB/km at 600 nm, and 130 dB/km at 532 nm. As a demonstration of the fiber potential applications, we report on a compact 600 THz wide Raman comb generator, centered around 532 nm, and on a 10 W average power frequency-doubled Yb-fiber picosecond laser beam delivery, along with its use for organic material laser micro-processing.

Supercritical xenon-filled hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber.

We demonstrate that filling a hollow-core photonic-bandgap fiber with supercritical xenon creates a medium with a controllable density up to several hundred times that at STP, while working at room temperature. The high compressibility of the supercritical fluid allows rapid tuning of the spectral guidance window by making small changes of gas pressure near the critical point. We discuss potential applications of this system in linear and nonlinear optics.

Hypocycloid-shaped hollow-core photonic crystal fiber Part I: arc curvature effect on confinement loss.

We report on numerical and experimental studies showing the influence of arc curvature on the confinement loss in hypocycloid-core Kagome hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. The results prove that with such a design the optical performances are strongly driven by the contour negative curvature of the core-cladding interface. They show that the increase in arc curvature results in a strong decrease in both the confinement loss and the optical power overlap between the core mode and the silica core-surround, including a modal content approaching true single-mode guidance. Fibers with enhanced negative curvature were then fabricated with a record loss-level of 17 dB/km at 1064 nm.

Hypocycloid-shaped hollow-core photonic crystal fiber Part II: cladding effect on confinement and bend loss.

We report on numerical and experimental studies on the influence of cladding ring-number on the confinement and bend loss in hypocycloid-shaped Kagome hollow core photonic crystal fiber. The results show that beyond the second ring, the ring number has a minor effect on confinement loss whereas the bend loss is strongly reduced with the ring-number increase. Finally, the results show that the increase in the cladding ring-number improves the modal content of the fiber.

Generation and confinement of microwave gas-plasma in photonic dielectric microstructure.

We report on a self-guided microwave surface-wave induced generation of ~60 µm diameter and 6 cm-long column of argon-plasma confined in the core of a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. At gas pressure of 1 mbar, the micro-confined plasma exhibits a stable transverse profile with a maximum gas-temperature as high as 1300 ± 200 K, and a wall-temperature as low as 500 K, and an electron density level of 10¹4 cm⁻³. The fiber guided fluorescence emission presents strong Ar⁺ spectral lines in the visible and near UV. Theory shows that the observed combination of relatively low wall-temperature and high ionisation rate in this strongly confined configuration is due to an unprecedentedly wide electrostatic space-charge field and the subsequent ion acceleration dominance in the plasma-to-gas power transfer.

Two-color rubidium fiber frequency standard.

We demonstrate an optical frequency standard based on rubidium vapor loaded within a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. We use the 5S(1/2)→5D(5/2) two-photon transition, excited with two lasers at 780 and 776 nm. The sum-frequency of these lasers is stabilized to this transition using modulation transfer spectroscopy, demonstrating a fractional frequency stability of 9.8×10(-12) at 1 s. The current performance limitations are presented, along with a path to improving the performance by an order of magnitude. This technique will deliver a compact, robust standard with potential applications in commercial and industrial environments.

Design and fabrication of hollow-core photonic crystal fibers for high-power ultrashort pulse transportation and pulse compression.

We report on the recent design and fabrication of kagome-type hollow-core photonic crystal fibers for the purpose of high-power ultrashort pulse transportation. The fabricated seven-cell three-ring hypocycloid-shaped large core fiber exhibits an up-to-date lowest attenuation (among all kagome fibers) of 40 dB/km over a broadband transmission centered at 1500 nm. We show that the large core size, low attenuation, broadband transmission, single-mode guidance, and low dispersion make it an ideal host for high-power laser beam transportation. By filling the fiber with helium gas, a 74 µJ, 850 fs, and 40 kHz repetition rate ultrashort pulse at 1550 nm has been faithfully delivered at the fiber output with little propagation pulse distortion. Compression of a 105 µJ laser pulse from 850 fs down to 300 fs has been achieved by operating the fiber in ambient air.

Millijoule laser pulse delivery for spark ignition through kagome hollow-core fiber.

We report on power handling oriented design of kagome lattice hollow-core fiber and demonstrate through it for the first time nanosecond laser pulses induced spark ignition in a friendly manner. Two different core designs and transmission bands are investigated and evaluated. The energy threshold damage was measured to be in excess of the 10 mJ level and the output power density is approaching the TW/cm2 after focusing; demonstrating the outstanding ability of such fiber for high power delivery.

Temporal pulse compression in a xenon-filled Kagome-type hollow-core photonic crystal fiber at high average power.

In this study we demonstrate the suitability of Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fibers (HC-PCF) for multiwatt average power pulse compression. We spectrally broadened picosecond pulses from a SESAM mode-locked thin disk laser in a xenon gas filled Kagome-type HC-PCF and compressed these pulses to below 250 fs with a hypocycloid-core fiber and 470 fs with a single cell core defect fiber. The compressed average output power of 7.2 W and 10.2 W at a pulse repetition rate of approximately 10 MHz corresponds to pulse energies of 0.7 µJ and 1 µJ and to peak powers of 1.6 MW and 1.7 MW, respectively. Further optimization of the fiber parameters should enable pulse compression to below 50 fs duration at substantially higher pulse energies.

Low loss broadband transmission in hypocycloid-core Kagome hollow-core photonic crystal fiber.

We report on the fabrication of a seven-cell-core and three-ring-cladding large-pitch Kagome-lattice hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HC-PCF) with a hypocycloid-shaped core structure. We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically that the design of this core shape enhances the coupling inhibition between the core and cladding modes and offers optical attenuation with a baseline of ∼180 dB/km over a transmission bandwidth larger than 200 THz. This loss figure rivals the state-of-the-art photonic bandgap HC-PCF while offering an approximately three times larger bandwidth and larger mode areas. Also, it beats the conventional circular-core-shaped Kagome HC-PCF in terms of the loss. The development of this novel (to our knowledge) HC-PCF has potential for a number of applications in which the combination of a large optical bandwidth and a low loss is a prerequisite.

Compact, stable and efficient all-fibre gas cells using hollow-core photonic crystal fibres.

Gas-phase materials are used in a variety of laser-based applications--for example, in high-precision frequency measurement, quantum optics and nonlinear optics. Their full potential has however not been realized because of the lack of a suitable technology for creating gas cells that can guide light over long lengths in a single transverse mode while still offering a high level of integration in a practical and compact set-up or device. As a result, solid-phase materials are still often favoured, even when their performance compares unfavourably with gas-phase systems. Here we report the development of all-fibre gas cells that meet these challenges. Our structures are based on gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibres, in which we have recently demonstrated substantially enhanced stimulated Raman scattering, and which exhibit high performance, excellent long-term pressure stability and ease of use. To illustrate the practical potential of these structures, we report two different devices: a hydrogen-filled cell for efficient generation of rotational Raman scattering using only quasi-continuous-wave laser pulses; and acetylene-filled cells, which we use for absolute frequency-locking of diode lasers with very high signal-to-noise ratios. The stable performance of these compact gas-phase devices could permit, for example, gas-phase laser devices incorporated in a 'credit card' or even in a laser pointer.

Matched cascade of bandgap-shift and frequency-conversion using stimulated Raman scattering in a tapered hollow-core photonic crystal fibre.

We report on a novel means which lifts the restriction of the limited optical bandwidth of photonic bandgap hollow-core photonic crystal fiber on generating high order stimulated Raman scattering in gaseous media. This is based on H(2)-filled tapered HC-PCF in which the taper slope is matched with the effective length of Raman process. Raman orders outside the input-bandwidth of the HC-PCF are observed with more than 80% quantum-conversion using a compact, low-power 1064 nm microchip laser. The technique opens prospects for efficient sources in spectral regions that are poorly covered by currently existing lasers such as mid-IR.

Compact and portable multiline UV and visible Raman lasers in hydrogen-filled HC-PCF.

We report on the realization of compact UV visible multiline Raman lasers based on two types of hydrogen-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. The first, with a large pitch Kagome lattice structure, offers a broad spectral coverage from near IR through to the much sought after yellow, deep-blue and UV, whereas the other, based on photonic bandgap guidance, presents a pump conversion concentrated in the visible region. The high Raman efficiency achieved through these fibers allows for compact, portable diode-pumped solid-state lasers to be used as pumps. Each discrete component of this laser system exhibits a spectral density several orders of magnitude larger than what is achieved with supercontinuum sources and a narrow linewidth, making it an ideal candidate for forensics and biomedical applications.

Quantum-fluctuation-initiated coherence in multioctave Raman optical frequency combs.

We show experimentally and theoretically that the spectral components of a multioctave frequency comb spontaneously created by stimulated Raman scattering in a hydrogen-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber exhibit strong self-coherence and mutual coherence within each 12 ns driving laser pulse. This coherence arises in spite of the field's initiation being from quantum zero-point fluctuations, which causes each spectral component to show large phase and energy fluctuations. This points to the possibility of an optical frequency comb with nonclassical correlations between all comb lines.