Polymer-composite fibers for transmitting high peak power pulses at 1.55 microns

Hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers (PBG) offer the opportunity to suppress highly the optical absorption and nonlinearities of their constituent materials, which makes them viable candidates for transmitting high-peak power pulses. We report the fabrication and characterization of polymer-composite PBG fibers in a novel materials system, polycarbonate and arsenic sulfide glass. Propagation losses for the 60 microm-core fibers are less than 2dB/m, a 52x improvement over previous 1D-PBG fibers at this wavelength. Through preferential coupling the fiber is capable of operating with over 97% the fiber's power output in the fundamental (HE(11)) mode. The fiber transmitted pulses with peak powers of 11.4 MW before failure.