Are hollow-core fibers attractive for high-power fiber lasers?

摘要

Silica-based hollow-core photonic bandgap (HC-PBG) fibers are of interest for high-power laser applications, due to the possibility of guiding the majority of the optical power in air, thus suppressing nonlinearities and the limitations set by the breakdown threshold of silica. In this contribution, we study numerically the laser-induced damage threshold in HC-PBG fibers as function of core size and cladding air-filling fraction, and compare to a typical silica-core large-mode area (LMA) fiber. Remarkably, the HC-PBG fibers yield no significant improvement over the LMA reference, indicating that radically new design ideas will be needed for HC-PBG fibers to be competitive as active components in a high-power laser system.