Design of hollow core step-index antiresonant fiber with stepped refractive indices cladding

Abstract

With the benefits of low latency, wide transmission bandwidth, and large mode field area, hollow-core antiresonant fiber (HC-ARF) has been a research hotspot in the past decade. In this paper, a hollow core step-index antiresonant fiber (HC-SARF), with stepped refractive indices cladding, is proposed and numerically demonstrated with the benefits of loss reduction and bending improvement. Glass-based capillaries with both high (n = 1.45) and low (as low as n = 1.36) refractive indices layers are introduced and formatted in the cladding air holes. Using the finite element method to perform numerical analysis of the designed fiber, results show that at the laser wavelengths of 980 and 1064 nm, the confinement loss is favorably reduced by about 6 dB/km compared with the conventional uniform cladding HC-ARF. The bending loss, around 15 cm bending radius of this fiber, is also reduced by 2 dB/km. The cladding air hole radius in this fiber is further investigated to optimize the confinement loss and the mode field diameter with single-mode transmission behavior. This proposed HC-SARF has great potential in optical fiber transmission and high energy delivery.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

antiresonant fiber (ARF) / stepped refractive indices / confinement loss / bending loss / laser pumping

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 62075074), and the National Key R&D Program of China (Nos. 2018YFF01011800 and 2018YFB2201901).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2020 Higher Education Press