Anti-resonant hexagram hollow core fibers

Various simple anti-resonant, single cladding layer, hollow core fiber structures are examined. We show that the spacing between core and jacket glass and the shape of the support struts can be used to optimize confinement loss. We demonstrate the detrimental effect on confinement loss of thick nodes at the strut intersections and present a fabricated hexagram fiber that mitigates this effect in both straight and bent condition by presenting thin and radially elongated nodes. This fiber has loss comparable to published results for a first generation, multi-cladding ring, Kagome fiber with negative core curvature and has tolerable bend loss for many practical applications.