Pooja Singh

Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

• What are these fibers ?

• Types of MSF

• Fabrication techniques

• Wave guidance

• Applications
Loss: amplifiers every 50–100km
…limited by Rayleigh scattering (molecular entropy)
…cannot use “exotic” wavelengths like 10.6µm

Nonlinearities: after ~100km, cause dispersion, crosstalk, power limits

(limited by mode area ~ single-mode, bending loss)
also cannot be made (very) large for compact nonlinear devices

Radical modifications to dispersion, polarization effects?

…tunability is limited by low index contrast
Types of MSF
1) High index core
(index guideing,
hole assisted)
2) Photonic band
gap(PBG)
(Band gap guiding)
 1000x better Bragg fiber
[ Yeh et al., 1978 ]
loss/nonlinear limits
(from density)
1d
crystal
+ omnidirectional
= OmniGuides

2d
crystal

Photonic Crystal

PCF
[ Knight et al., 1998 ]
solid core

holey cladding forms

effective
low-index material

Can have much higher contrast

than doped silica…
strong confinement = enhanced
nonlinearities, birefringence, …
 nonlinear fibers
endlessly [ Wadsworth et al.,
single-mode JOSA B 19,
2148 (2002) ]
[ T. A. Birks et al.,
Opt. Lett. 22,
961 (1997) ]

polarization [ K. Suzuki,
Opt. Express 9, low-contrast
-maintaining 676 (2001) ]
linear fiber
(large area)

[ J. C. Knight et al.,
Elec. Lett. 34,
1347 (1998) ]
Fabricated by stacking an
array of capillaries in a
hexagonal configuration
around a solid rod which
forms the core

Preform is heated to 2000 C

to soften silica

The resulting preform is

reduced to fibre dimensions
using a conventional fibre
drawing tower
Final steps

Once the final

dimensions are
reached: fiber is
coated with a polymer
and then
fiber is wound onto
spool.
(A) Propagation diagram
for a conventional
single-mode fiber

(B) Propagation diagram

for a triangular lattice of
air channels in silica glass
with 45% air-filling
fraction
In a solid-core PCF, the pattern of air
holes acts like a modal sieve.

In (a), the fundamental

mode is unable to escape
because it cannot fit in the
gaps between the air
holes—its effective
wavelength in the
transverse plane is too
large.

In (b) and (c), the higher order

modes are able to leak away
because their transverse
effective wavelength is
smaller.

If the diameter of the air holes is increased, the gaps between them
shrink and more and more higher order modes become trapped in the
“sieve.”
 Many physical properties can be engineered (power fraction,
birefringence, chromatic dispersion,…)

• The waveguide dispersion can be engineered to have the zero

dispersion wavelength at any desired wavelength. This is useful
for nonlinear applications, where normal dispersion is a limiting
factor.

• By changing the core diameter of fiber, the Zero Dispersion

Wavelength can be shifted to the visible range.

• PCF can be filled with gases or liquids for sensing.

Gas-based nonlinear optics. A
long-standing challenge in
photonics is how to maximize
nonlinear interactions between
laser light and low-density media
such as gases.
It requires
1.high intensities at low power
2.long interaction lengths
good-quality transverse beam
profiles.
Ultrahigh nonlinearities. PCFs
with extremely small solid glass
cores and very high air-filling
fractions not only display
unusual chromatic dispersion
but also yield very high optical
intensities per unit power. Thus
one of the most successful
applications of PCF is to
nonlinear optics, where high
effective nonlinearities, together
with excellent control of
chromatic dispersion, are
essential for efficient devices.
Supercontinuum generation
(A)The supercontinuum spectrum
produced from an infrared
laser operating at 800 nm and
producing 200-fs pulses.

(B) The supercontinuum

spectrum consists of millions
of individual frequencies,
spaced by the ∼100-MHz
repetition rate of the infrared
laser. The resulting ladder can
be used as a highly accurate
“ruler” for measuring
frequency