Oxyfluoride core silica-based optical fiber with intrinsically low nonlinearities for high energy laser applications

Abstract

A few-moded silica-based optical fiber fabricated from core materials that possess intrinsically low optical nonlinearities is reported. Specifically, the 8 μm core, 125 μm cladding diameter silicate fiber was composed of a strontium aluminosilicate oxyfluoride core with a fused silica cladding and was fabricated using the molten core method. Relative to conventional optical fibers, reductions of ∼6.3 dB in Brillouin gain coefficient (gB), ∼0.9 dB in Raman gain coefficient (gR), and ∼2.2 dB in thermo-optic coefficient (TOC) were realized as was a “silica-like” nonlinear refractive index (n2) with a value of ∼3x10−20 m2/W. The role of each core material constituent on parameters that drive optical nonlinearities is discussed to provide a materials solution route for low nonlinearity fiber systems. Materially addressing optical nonlinearities represents a simpler and more effective approach to mitigating power-scaling limits in high energy fiber laser systems compared to the geometric approaches employed using microstructured fibers.

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Identifiers

ORCID for A.C. Peacock: orcid.org/0000-0002-1940-7172

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