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Loss in hollow-core fibers: mechanisms, scaling rules, and limits

Loss in hollow-core fibers: mechanisms, scaling rules, and limits
Loss in hollow-core fibers: mechanisms, scaling rules, and limits
Over the past few years, progress in hollow-core optical fiber technology has reduced the attenuation of these fibers to levels comparable to those of all-solid silica-core single-mode fibers. The sustained pace of progress in the field has sparked renewed interest in the technology and created the expectation that it will one day enable realization of the most transparent light-propagating waveguides ever produced, across all spectral regions of interest. In this work we review and analyze the various physical mechanisms that drive attenuation in hollow-core optical fibers. We consider both the somewhat legacy hollow-core photonic bandgap technology as well as the more recent antiresonant hollow-core fibers. As both fiber types exploit different guidance mechanisms from that of conventional solid-core fibers to confine light to the central core, their attenuation is also dominated by a different set of physical processes, which we analyze here in detail. First, we discuss intrinsic loss mechanisms in perfect and idealized fibers. These include leakage loss, absorption, and scattering within the gas filling the core or from the glass microstructure surrounding it, and roughness scattering from the air–glass interfaces within the fibers. The latter contribution is analyzed rigorously, clarifying inaccuracies in the literature that often led to the use of inadequate scaling rules. We then explore the extrinsic contributions to loss and discuss the effect of random microbends as well as that of other perturbations and non-uniformities that may result from imperfections in the fabrication process. These effects impact the loss of the fiber predominantly by scattering light from the fundamental mode into lossier higher-order modes and cladding modes. Although these contributions have often been neglected, their role becomes increasingly important in the context of producing, one day, hollow-core fibers with sub-0.1-dB/km loss and a pure single-mode guidance. Finally, we present general scaling rules for all the loss mechanisms mentioned previously and combine them to examine the performance of recently reported fibers. We lay some general guidelines for the design of low-loss hollow-core fibers operating at different spectral regions and conclude the paper with a brief outlook on the future of this potentially transformative technology.
hollow-core optical fibers, loss, telecommunications, optical fibers, optical fiber sensors
Numkam Fokoua, Eric
6d9f7e50-dc3b-440a-a0b9-f4a08dd02ccd
Abokhamis Mousavi, Seyed
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Jasion, Gregory T.
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Richardson, David J.
ebfe1ff9-d0c2-4e52-b7ae-c1b13bccdef3
Poletti, Francesco
9adcef99-5558-4644-96d7-ce24b5897491
Numkam Fokoua, Eric
6d9f7e50-dc3b-440a-a0b9-f4a08dd02ccd
Abokhamis Mousavi, Seyed
5cde8762-0a43-461c-a124-857d1aca102b
Jasion, Gregory T.
16cfff1d-d178-41d1-a092-56e6239726b8
Richardson, David J.
ebfe1ff9-d0c2-4e52-b7ae-c1b13bccdef3
Poletti, Francesco
9adcef99-5558-4644-96d7-ce24b5897491

Numkam Fokoua, Eric, Abokhamis Mousavi, Seyed, Jasion, Gregory T., Richardson, David J. and Poletti, Francesco (2023) Loss in hollow-core fibers: mechanisms, scaling rules, and limits. Advances in Optics and Photonics, 15 (1). (doi:10.1364/AOP.470592).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Over the past few years, progress in hollow-core optical fiber technology has reduced the attenuation of these fibers to levels comparable to those of all-solid silica-core single-mode fibers. The sustained pace of progress in the field has sparked renewed interest in the technology and created the expectation that it will one day enable realization of the most transparent light-propagating waveguides ever produced, across all spectral regions of interest. In this work we review and analyze the various physical mechanisms that drive attenuation in hollow-core optical fibers. We consider both the somewhat legacy hollow-core photonic bandgap technology as well as the more recent antiresonant hollow-core fibers. As both fiber types exploit different guidance mechanisms from that of conventional solid-core fibers to confine light to the central core, their attenuation is also dominated by a different set of physical processes, which we analyze here in detail. First, we discuss intrinsic loss mechanisms in perfect and idealized fibers. These include leakage loss, absorption, and scattering within the gas filling the core or from the glass microstructure surrounding it, and roughness scattering from the air–glass interfaces within the fibers. The latter contribution is analyzed rigorously, clarifying inaccuracies in the literature that often led to the use of inadequate scaling rules. We then explore the extrinsic contributions to loss and discuss the effect of random microbends as well as that of other perturbations and non-uniformities that may result from imperfections in the fabrication process. These effects impact the loss of the fiber predominantly by scattering light from the fundamental mode into lossier higher-order modes and cladding modes. Although these contributions have often been neglected, their role becomes increasingly important in the context of producing, one day, hollow-core fibers with sub-0.1-dB/km loss and a pure single-mode guidance. Finally, we present general scaling rules for all the loss mechanisms mentioned previously and combine them to examine the performance of recently reported fibers. We lay some general guidelines for the design of low-loss hollow-core fibers operating at different spectral regions and conclude the paper with a brief outlook on the future of this potentially transformative technology.

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Accepted/In Press date: 29 September 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 20 January 2023
Published date: 31 March 2023
Additional Information: Funding Information: we are grateful to many colleagues past and present for stimulating discussions and valuable insight: John Hayes, Yong Chen, Thomas Bradley, Hesham Sakr, Natalie Wheeler, Marco Petrovich, Ian Davidson, Austin Taranta, Wei Wang, Reza San-doghchi, and Radan Slavík. Eric Numkam Fokoua acknowledges support from a Royal Academy of Engineering Research fellowship. This work was also supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P030181/1: Airguide Photonics) and by the H2020 European Research Council (682724: Lightpipe).
Keywords: hollow-core optical fibers, loss, telecommunications, optical fibers, optical fiber sensors

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 470826
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/470826
PURE UUID: 2e7cbc4e-9ca2-4beb-9074-d3a5724b753b
ORCID for Eric Numkam Fokoua: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-0873-911X
ORCID for Seyed Abokhamis Mousavi: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-5250-2630
ORCID for Gregory T. Jasion: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5030-6479
ORCID for David J. Richardson: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7751-1058
ORCID for Francesco Poletti: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1000-3083

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Date deposited: 20 Oct 2022 16:35
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 07:32

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Author: Eric Numkam Fokoua ORCID iD

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