Abstract

The dramatic progress in power-scaling of ultra-short pulse (USP) lasers and their continuous expansion use in industrial applications call for flexible and robust beam delivery systems (BDS) over several meters. Recently, a new branch of hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HC-PCF) based on inhibited coupling (IC) mechanism has been proposed and successfully applied to demonstrate the delivery of milliJoule 600 femtosecond pulses in a several meter long piece and in robustly single-mode fashion [1]. Despite this breakthrough, it is desirable to reduce further the attenuation and enlarge the operating bandwidth of such fiber to increase the capability of the BDS whilst keeping the same delivery performances. In this context, a carefully optimization of the geometrical parameters of the core contour (i.e., the curvature b [2] and the silica thickness t) is studied resulting in the fabrication of new state-of-the-art IC Kagome HC-PCF combining losses less than 10 dB/km for the first time and associated to an enlarged transmission bandwidth able to cover all the entire industrial spectral range.

© 2017 IEEE