Transmission of UV light with high beam quality and pointing stability is
desirable for many experiments in atomic, molecular and optical physics. In
particular, laser cooling and coherent manipulation of trapped ions with
transitions in the UV require stable, single-mode light delivery. Transmitting
even ~2 mW CW light at 280 nm through silica solid-core fibers has previously
been found to cause transmission degradation after just a few hours due to
optical damage. We show that photonic crystal fiber of the kagom\'e type can be
used for effectively single-mode transmission with acceptable loss and bending
sensitivity. No transmission degradation was observed even after >100 hours of
operation with 15 mW CW input power. In addition it is shown that
implementation of the fiber in a trapped ion experiment significantly increases
the coherence times of the internal state transfer due to an increase in beam
pointing stability
