Francois Couny

Ultimate low loss of hollow-core photonic crystal fibres

Hollow-core photonic crystal fibres have excited interest as potential ultra-low loss telecommunications fibres because light propagates mainly in air instead of solid glass. We propose that the ultimate limit to the attenuation of such fibres is determined by surface roughness due to frozenin capillary waves. This is confirmed by measurements of the surface roughness in a HC-PCF, the angular distribution of the power scattered out of the core, and the wavelength dependence of the minimum loss of fibres drawn to different scales.

Compact, stable and efficient all-fibre gas cells using hollow-core photonic crystal fibres

Gas-phase materials are used in a variety of laser-based applications—for example, in high-precision frequency measurement, quantum optics and nonlinear optics. Their full potential has however not been realized because of the lack of a suitable technology for creating gas cells that can guide light over long lengths in a single transverse mode while still offering a high level of integration in a practical and compact set-up or device. As a result, solid-phase materials are still often favoured, even when their performance compares unfavourably with gas-phase systems. Here we report the development of all-fibre gas cells that meet these challenges. Our structures are based on gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibres, in which we have recently demonstrated substantially enhanced stimulated Raman scattering, and which exhibit high performance, excellent long-term pressure stability and ease of use. To illustrate the practical potential of these structures, we report two different devices: a hydrogen-filled cell for efficient generation of rotational Raman scattering using only quasi-continuous-wave laser pulses; and acetylene-filled cells, which we use for absolute frequency-locking of diode lasers with very high signal-to-noise ratios. The stable performance of these compact gas-phase devices could permit, for example, gas-phase laser devices incorporated in a ‘credit card’ or even in a laser pointer.

Generation and Photonic Guidance of Multi-Octave Optical-Frequency Combs

Ultrabroad coherent comb-like optical spectra spanning several octaves are a chief ingredient in the emerging field of attoscience. We demonstrate generation and guidance of a three-octave spectral comb, spanning wavelengths from 325 to 2300 nanometers, in a hydrogen-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. The waveguidance results not from a photonic band gap but from the inhibited coupling between the core and cladding modes. The spectrum consists of up to 45 high-order Stokes and anti-Stokes lines and is generated by driving the confined gas with a single, moderately powerful (10-kilowatt) infrared laser, producing 12-nanosecond-duration pulses. This represents a reduction by six orders of magnitude in the required laser powers over previous equivalent techniques and opens up a robust and much simplified route to synthesizing attosecond pulses.

Low loss broadband transmission in hypocycloid-core Kagome hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

We report on the fabrication of a seven-cell-core and three-ring-cladding large-pitch Kagome-lattice hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HC-PCF) with a hypocycloid-shaped core structure. We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically that the design of this core shape enhances the coupling inhibition between the core and cladding modes and offers optical attenuation with a baseline of ∼180 dB/km over a transmission bandwidth larger than 200 THz. This loss figure rivals the state-of-the-art photonic bandgap HC-PCF while offering an approximately three times larger bandwidth and larger mode areas. Also, it beats the conventional circular-core-shaped Kagome HC-PCF in terms of the loss. The development of this novel (to our knowledge) HC-PCF has potential for a number of applications in which the combination of a large optical bandwidth and a low loss is a prerequisite.

Large-pitch kagome-structured hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

We report the fabrication and characterization of a new type of hollow-core photonic crystal fiber based on large-pitch (approximately 12 microm) kagome lattice cladding. The optical characteristics of the 19-cell, 7-cell, and single-cell core defect fibers include broad optical transmission bands covering the visible and near-IR parts of the spectrum with relatively low loss and low chromatic dispersion, no detectable surface modes and high confinement of light in the core. Various applications of such a novel fiber are also discussed, including gas sensing, quantum optics, and high harmonic generation.

Realizing low loss air core photonic crystal fibers by exploiting an antiresonant core surround

The modal properties of an air core photonic crystal fiber which incorporates an anti-resonant feature within the region that marks the transition between the air core and the crystal cladding are numerically calculated. The field intensity at the glass/air interfaces is shown to be reduced by a factor of approximately three compared to a fiber with more conventional core surround geometry. The reduced interface field intensity comes at the expense of an increased number of unwanted core interface modes within the band gap. When the interface field intensity is associated with modal propagation loss, the findings are in accord with recent measurements on fabricated fibers which incorporate a similar antiresonant feature.

Loss in solid-core photonic crystal fibers due to interface roughness scattering

The loss resulting from roughness scattering at hole interfaces within solid core photonic crystal fibers is theoretically analyzed and compared with measurements on fabricated fibers. It is found that a model roughness spectrum corresponding to frozen in capillary waves gives results in reasonably good agreement with experiments on small core fibers. In particular, the roughness scattering loss is shown to be only weakly dependent on wavelength. Agreement at a larger core size requires a long length-scale cut-off to be introduced to the roughness spectrum. Due to the long range nature of the roughness correlations, the scattering is non Rayleigh in character and cannot be interpreted in terms of a local photon density of states.

Structural rocking filters in highly birefringent photonic crystal fiber

We report what we believe is the first example of efficient rocking filter formation in polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber. Very high coupling efficiencies (as much as -23.5-dB suppression of the input polarization) and loss of < 0.02 dB were achieved for fibers as short as 11 mm. The filters, which we prepared by periodic mechanical twisting and heating with a scanned CO2 laser beam, are highly compact, and they are expected to be temperature stable.

Electromagnetically-induced transparency grid in acetylene-filled hollow-core PCF

We report a set of experimental observations on electromagnetically induced transparency in acetylene filled hollow-core photonic crystal fiber, involving both Lambda-type and V-type interactions over several lines of the R-branch of the nu1 + nu3 ro-vibrational overtone band. Transparency as high as ~70% was achieved. A theoretical account of the sources of decoherence shows that collisions with the inner wall of the fiber core and laser frequency-jitter dominate the coherence decay.

Identification of Bloch-modes in hollow-core photonic crystal fiber cladding

We report on the experimental visualization of the cladding Bloch-modes of a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. Both spectral and spatial field nformation is extracted using the approach, which is based on measurement of the near-field and Fresnel-zone that results after propagation over a short length of fiber. A detailed study of the modes near the edges of the band gap shows that it is formed by the influence of three types of resonator: the glass interstitial apex, the silica strut which joins the neighboring apexes, and the air hole. The cladding electromagnetic field which survives the propagation is found to be spatially coherent and to contain contributions from just a few types of cladding mode.