The vision behind this work is the fabrication of high performance innovative fiber-based optical components over kilometer length-scales. The optical properties of these fibers derive from their multilayer dielectric photonic band-gap structure that exhibits omnidirectional reflectivity. The theoretical tools needed to design, analyze and optimize such structures are introduced. We show that defect layers in these otherwise periodic structures act as optical micro-cavities that enable precise design of the fibers' spectral response. Fabrication of these composite fibers by thermal drawing of a macroscopic preform in the viscous state requires solving material selection challenges in order to identify pairs of materials with high refractive index contrast and similar thermo-mechanical properties. Operational wavelengths ranging from the UV to the IR are demonstrated and made possible by the wavelength scalability of the photonic band-gap structure and accurate knowledge of the materials' dispersion relation afforded by broadband spectroscopic ellipsometry. The fundamentals of this technique, which is used to characterize a number of dielectrics, semi-conductors and metals, are surveyed. Two fiber structures are then explored: fibers for external reflection and hollow-core transmission fibers.
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