Novel hollow-core chalcogenide fiber with anti-resonant arches for high-power infrared laser transmission

An innovative hollow-core fiber with anti-resonant arches (HC-ARA) is designed and made of chalcogenide glass As2S3. The HC-ARA fiber has a single layer of eight non-touching curved arches, each one being solidly attached at two locations on the outer solid region to prevent any lateral displacement and to preserve the arches' shape and uniformity during the fabrication process. The thickness and spacing between the arches are selected to minimize the fiber transmission loss <0.1 dB/m for CO2 laser at 10.6 micron. Also the higher order modes of the HC-ARA fiber are more attenuated than the fundamental mode, so the fiber is effectively single mode after only a few meters. The HC-ARA preform is made by extrusion of chalcogenide glass through a die specifically designed to produce the anti-resonant arches. The extruded HC-ARA preform is pulled in a fiber using photonic crystal fiber draw techniques. Recent simulation and experimental results on the HC-ARA fiber are presented to illustrate a novel fiber solution for CO2 laser transmission at 10.6 micron.