Thorkild Sørensen

Gas sensing using air-guiding photonic bandgap fibers

We report on experimental studies of gas sensing using air-guiding photonic bandgap fibers. The photonic bandgap fibers have at one end been spliced to standard single mode fibers for ease of use and improved stability

Selective filling of photonic crystal fibres

A model for calculating the time necessary for filling one or more specific holes in a photonic crystal fibre is made. This model is verified for water, and its enabling potential is illustrated by a polymer application. Selective filling of the core in an air-guide photonic crystal fibre is demonstrated for a polymer and for water. Launching light into such a hybrid-material core proves to be very easily done. Finally, a scheme for enabling access to the core alone, by use of a fusion splicer, is presented.

Photonic crystal fibers

Photonic crystal fibers having a complex microstructure in the transverse plane constitute a new and promising class of optical fibers. Such fibers can either guide light through total internal reflection or the photonic bandgap effect, In this paper, we review the different types and applications of photonic crystal fibers with particular emphasis on recent advances in the field.

Ultra-large bandwidth hollow-core guiding in all-silica bragg fibers with nano-supports

We demonstrate a new class of hollow-core Bragg fibers that are composed of concentric cylindrical silica rings separated by nanoscale support bridges. We theoretically predict and experimentally observe hollow-core confinement over an octave frequency range. The bandwidth of bandgap guiding in this new class of Bragg fibers exceeds that of other hollow-core fibers reported in the literature. With only three rings of silica cladding layers, these Bragg fibers achieve propagation loss of the order of 1 dB/m.

Nanoengineering of photonic crystal fibers for supercontinuum spectral shaping

Supercontinuum generation using picosecond pulses pumped into cobweb photonic crystal fibers is investigated. Dispersion profiles are calculated for several fiber designs and used to analytically investigate the influence of the fiber structural parameters (core size and wall thickness) on the location of the Stokes and anti-Stokes bands and gain bandwidth. An analysis shows that the Raman effect is responsible for reducing the four-wave mixing gain and a slight reduction in the corresponding frequency shift from the pump, when the frequency shift is much larger than the Raman shift. Using numerical simulations we find that four-wave mixing is the dominant physical mechanism for the pumping scheme considered, and that there is a trade-off between the spectral width and the spectral flatness of the supercontinuum. The balance of this trade-off is determined by nanometer-scale design of the fiber structural parameters. It is also shown that the relatively high loss of the nonlinear fiber does not significantly affect the supercontinuum generation.

Dispersion Properties of Photonic Crystal Fibers - Issues and Opportunities

The dispersion, which expresses the variation with wavelength of the guided-mode group velocity, is one of the most important properties of optical fibers. Photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) offer much larger flexibility than conventional fibers with respect to tailoring of the dispersion curve. This is partly due to the large refractive-index contrast available in silica/air microstructures, and partly due to the possibility of making complex refractive-index structures over the fiber cross section. We discuss the fundamental physical mechanisms determining the dispersion properties of PCFs guiding by either total internal reflection or photonic bandgap effects, and use these insights to outline design principles and generic behaviours of various types of PCFs. A number of examples from recent modeling and experimental work serve to illustrate our general conclusions.

Photonic crystal structures in sensing technology

Photonic crystal materials and waveguides have since their appearance in 1987 attracted very much attention from the scientific community. From being a more academia discipline, new components and functionalities have emerged, and photonic crystals have today started to enter the field of commercial devices. Especially the photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with its lattice of air holes running along the length of the fiber has matured, and the technology provides a large variety of novel optical properties and improvements compared to standard optical fibers. With respect to optical sensors, the photonic crystal structures have several important properties. First of all the wavelength-scale periodically-arranged material structures provide completely new means of fabricating tailored optical properties either using modified total internal reflection or the photonic bandgap effect. Secondly, the new materials with numerous micro- or even nano-scale structures and voids allow for superior mode control, use of polarization properties, and even more a the potential of close interaction between optical field and the material under test. The present paper will be using the example of the relatively mature photonic crystal fiber to discuss the fundamental optical properties of the photonic crystals, and recent examples of their use as optical sensors will be reviewed.

Macrobending loss properties of photonic crystal fibres with different air filling fractions

We present experimental and theoretical analysis of macrobending losses of photonic crystal fibres with various air filling fractions. A scalar, effective-index method provides a good description of the losses for fibres with limited air filling fractions, whereas the method overestimates the losses for fibres with larger air filling fractions.

Nano-engineering of photonic crystal fibers for supercontinuum generation

Supercontinuum generation using picosecond pulses pumped into cobweb photonic crystal fibres is investigated. Dispersion profiles are calculated for several fibre designs. The influence of the fibre structural parameters on the location of the Stokes/anti-Stokes peaks and gain bandwidth is investigated. We find that four-wave mixing is the dominant physical mechanism for the pumping scheme considered here, and that there is a tradeoff between the spectral width and the spectral flatness. The balance of this tradeoff is determined by nanometer-scale design of the fibre structural parameters.

Modeling and experimental verification of infusion speed of liquids in photonic crystal fibers

A theoretical method for predicting infusion time of liquids in microcapillaries is formulated. Through a microscopical, a fluorescent, and, finally, through a reflectometric measurement method, the model is successfully verified in real photonic crystal fibers.