Development of hollow-core photonic bandgap fibres free of surface modes

Conventional optical fibres can only guide light in a high refractive index core by total internal reflection. By using total internal reflections it is not possible to guide light in an air core. Light guidance in air is of great interest for various technological and scientific applications and has only recently been possible with the advent of photonic band gap fibres. However, the transmission performance of silica/air hollow-core photonic bandgap fibres has until now been affected by the existence of surface modes. These surface modes couple with the air-guided mode in specific spectral ranges inside the bandgap simultaneously increasing the attenuation and dispersion of the air-guided mode and reducing the useable bandwidth of the fibre. Therefore, for many applications it is important to eliminate surface modes or at least reduce their impact on the air mode. The fabrication of the first hollow-core photonic bandgap fibre with no surface modes is presented in this thesis. The fibre has state-of-the-art attenuation over the full spectral width of the bandgap. As a result of the elimination of surface modes the fibre presents increased bandwidth, reduced dispersion and dispersion slope compared to previous hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers. These advances have been possible due to the development of a modified fabrication method which makes the production of low-loss hollow-core fibers both simpler and 5 to 6 times quicker than previously. This development makes hollow-core fibres with improved performance more readily available than ever before