Abstract
Using micro-optic collimator technology, we present compact, low-loss optical interconnection devices for hollow core fibers (HCFs). This approach is one of the key manufacturing platforms for commercially available fiber optic components and most forms of HCFs can readily be incorporated into this platform without the need for any substantial or complicated adaptation or physical deformation of the fiber structure. Furthermore, this technique can provide for very low Fresnel reflection interconnection between solid-core fiber and HCF and in addition provides a hermetic seal for HCFs, which can be a critical issue for many HCF applications. In this paper, several exemplar HCF components are fabricated with low insertion loss (0.5-2 dB), low Fresnel reflection (-45 dB) and high modal purity (>20 dB) using various state-of-the-art HCFs.
Highlights
Hollow core fibers (HCFs), which guide light in air or a vacuum within a hollow core, have attracted great interest as a promising means to overcome various limitations associated with conventional solid core fibers in which the light propagates within glass [1-3]
Fusion splicing is the most widely used approach to interconnect a HCF to a conventional single mode fiber (SMF) but unless other steps are taken this results in a strong Fresnel reflection at the SMF-HCF air-glass interface which can be problematic for many applications
Angle-cleaved fiber splicing has been proposed to suppress such back reflection [11] the output beam direction from the angle-cleaved solid fiber is deflected from the fiber axis in the process, resulting in increased splice loss and the excitation of higher-order HCF modes which can be problematic in many instances
Summary
Hollow core fibers (HCFs), which guide light in air or a vacuum within a hollow core, have attracted great interest as a promising means to overcome various limitations associated with conventional solid core fibers in which the light propagates within glass [1-3]. Several different types of HCF (e.g. photonic bandgap fibers and anti-resonant fibers such as Tubular and Kagome fibers) have been proposed to exploit the fascinating features of guidance in an air core (e.g. low nonlinearity, low Rayleigh scattering, low latency, good thermal stability, high damage threshold and high radiation hardness) and such fibers have shown excellent performance in applications such as optical communications, high power laser beam delivery, gyroscopes, sensors and Raman spectroscopy [4-10] Whilst such fibers have been available for several years, there is still a lack of reliable interconnection techniques for HCF technology and an associated lack of integrated HCF components. We further extend our work to multiport HCF devices and demonstrate several exemplar in-line 3-port HCF components which exhibit low insertion loss, good modal quality and low Fresnel reflections
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