Development of hollow-core photonic bandgap fibres free of surface modes

Conventional optical fibres can only guide light in a high refractive index core by total internal reflection. By using total internal reflections it is not possible to guide light in an air core. Light guidance in air is of great interest for various technological and scientific applications and has only recently been possible with the advent of photonic band gap fibres. However, the transmission performance of silica/air hollow-core photonic bandgap fibres has until now been affected by the existence of surface modes. These surface modes couple with the air-guided mode in specific spectral ranges inside the bandgap simultaneously increasing the attenuation and dispersion of the air-guided mode and reducing the useable bandwidth of the fibre. Therefore, for many applications it is important to eliminate surface modes or at least reduce their impact on the air mode. The fabrication of the first hollow-core photonic bandgap fibre with no surface modes is presented in this thesis. The fibre has state-of-the-art attenuation over the full spectral width of the bandgap. As a result of the elimination of surface modes the fibre presents increased bandwidth, reduced dispersion and dispersion slope compared to previous hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers. These advances have been possible due to the development of a modified fabrication method which makes the production of low-loss hollow-core fibers both simpler and 5 to 6 times quicker than previously. This development makes hollow-core fibres with improved performance more readily available than ever before

Complete Polarization Control in Multimode Fibers with Polarization and Mode Coupling

Multimode optical fibers have seen increasing applications in communication, imaging, high-power lasers and amplifiers. However, inherent imperfections and environmental perturbations cause random polarization and mode mixing, making the output polarization states very different from the input one. This poses a serious issue for employing polarization sensitive techniques to control light-matter interactions or nonlinear optical processes at the distal end of a fiber probe. Here we demonstrate a complete control of polarization states for all output channels by only manipulating the spatial wavefront of a laser beam into the fiber. Arbitrary polarization states for individual output channels are generated by wavefront shaping without constraint on input polarizations. The strong coupling between spatial and polarization degrees of freedom in a multimode fiber enables full polarization control with spatial degrees of freedom alone, transforming a multimode fiber to a highly-efficient reconfigurable matrix of waveplates

Multi-stage generation of extreme ultraviolet dispersive waves by tapering gas-filled hollow-core anti-resonant fibers

In this work, we numerically investigate an experimentally feasible design of a tapered Ne-filled hollow-core anti-resonant fiber and we report the generation of multiple dispersive waves (DWs) in the range 90-120 nm, well into the extreme ultraviolet (UV) region. The simulations assume an 800 nm pump pulse with 30 fs 10 $\mu$J pulse energy, launched into a 9 bar Ne-filled fiber with $34~\mu$m initial core diameter that is then tapered to a $10~\mu$m core diameter. The simulations were performed using a new model that provides a realistic description of both loss and dispersion of the resonant and anti-resonant spectral bands of the fiber, and also importantly includes the material loss of silica in the UV. We show that by first generating solitons that emit DWs in the far-UV region in the pre-taper section, optimization of the following taper structure can allow re-collision with the solitons and further up-conversion of the far-UV DWs to the extreme-UV with energies up to 190 nJ in the 90-120 nm range. This process provides a new way to generate light in the extreme-UV spectral range using relatively low gas pressure

Polarization-resolved second-harmonic generation imaging through a multimode fiber

Multimode fiber-based endoscopes have recently emerged as a tool for minimally invasive endoscopy in tissue, at depths well beyond the reach of multiphoton imaging. Here, we demonstrate label-free second-harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy through such a fiber endoscope. We simultaneously fully control the excitation polarization state and the spatial distribution of the light at the fiber tip, and we use this to implement polarization-resolved SHG imaging, which allows imaging and identification of structural proteins such as collagen and myosin. We image mouse tail tendon and heart tissue, employing the endoscope at depths up to 1 mm, demonstrating that we can differentiate these structural proteins. This method has the potential for enabling instant and in situ diagnosis of tumors and fibrotic conditions in sensitive tissue with minimal damage

White Gaussian Noise Based Capacity Estimate and Characterization of Fiber-Optic Links

We use white Gaussian noise as a test signal for single-mode and multimode transmission links and estimate the link capacity based on a calculation of mutual information. We also extract the complex amplitude channel estimations and mode-dependent loss with high accuracy.Comment: submitted to The Optical Networking and Communication Conference (OFC) 201