Higher-Order Mode Suppression in Antiresonant Nodeless Hollow-Core Fibers

Negative curvature hollow-core fibers (NC-HCFs) are useful as gas sensors. We numerically analyze the single-mode performance of NC-HCFs. Both single-ring NC-HCFs and nested antiresonant fibers (NANFs) are investigated. When the size of the cladding tubes is properly designed, higher-order modes (HO...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Aichen Ge, Fanchao Meng, Yanfeng Li, Bowen Liu, Minglie Hu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2019-02-01
Series:Micromachines
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/10/2/128
Description
Summary:Negative curvature hollow-core fibers (NC-HCFs) are useful as gas sensors. We numerically analyze the single-mode performance of NC-HCFs. Both single-ring NC-HCFs and nested antiresonant fibers (NANFs) are investigated. When the size of the cladding tubes is properly designed, higher-order modes (HOMs) in the fiber core can be coupled with the cladding modes effectively and form high-loss supermodes. For the single-ring structure, we propose a novel NC-HCF with hybrid cladding tubes to enable suppression of the first two HOMs in the core simultaneously. For the nested structure, we find that cascaded coupling is necessary to maximize the loss of the HOMs in NANFs, and, as a result, NANFs with five nested tubes have an advantage in single-mode guidance performance. Moreover, a novel NANF with hybrid extended cladding tubes is proposed. In this kind of NANF, higher-order mode extinction ratios (HOMERs) of 10<sup>5</sup> and even 10<sup>6</sup> are obtained for the LP<sub>11</sub> and LP<sub>21</sub> modes, respectively, and a similar level of 10<sup>5</sup> for the LP<sub>02</sub> modes. Good single-mode performance is maintained within a broad wavelength range. In addition, the loss of the LP<sub>01</sub> modes in this kind of NANF is as low as 3.90 &#215; 10<sup>&#8722;4</sup> dB/m.
ISSN:2072-666X