Nested compound negative curvature hollow-core fiber for single-mode operation in the infrared region

Abstract

In this study, a novel tubular hollow-core fiber design with extended cladding structures aiming low transmission losses and dominant single-mode guidance in the infrared region is proposed. The fiber parameters are optimized to achieve low-loss operation at the target wavelength of 2μm, at which the emission spectrum of thulium-doped fiber lasers are centered. The confinement loss of the fundamental mode is found to be less than 0.02 dB/km in the near- and mid-infrared region, which makes the proposed design a strong alternative for conventional step-index silica optical fibers. Strong suppression of the higher order modes, and low bending sensitivity are also observed in the proposed design. The proposed fiber shows promising results to achieve low-loss transmission in the infrared spectrum.