Abstract

The flexible guiding of light in air-filled hollow-core fibers over long distances has been of interest due to the inherently low dispersion of this kind of fiber. Among them, the inhibited-coupling guiding hollow-core photonic crystal fibers (IC-HCPCFs) are considered as an ideal solution for the flexible delivery of ultrashort laser pulses. Thanks to the low power overlap of the core-guided light with the surrounding glass in the range of 10⁻⁴ ~ 10⁻⁶ [1], IC-HCPCFs can handle laser beams with high peak powers and intensities. During beam delivery, it is desired to preserve all the important properties of the laser beam, including temporal pulse shape, spectral band width, peak power, and especially the state of polarization, since the latter plays an essential role in many applications [2]. It was shown that the bending-induced phase shift increases with decreasing bending radius due to the enhanced mismatch between the two orthogonally polarized fundamental core modes [3].

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