Characterization of photonic bandgap fiber for high-power narrow-linewidth optical transport

An investigation of the use of hollow-core photonic bandgap (PBG) fiber to transport high-power narrow-linewidth light is performed. In conventional fiber the main limitation in this case is stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) but in PBG fiber the overlap between the optical intensity and the silica that hosts the acoustic phonons is reduced. In this paper we show this should increase the SBS threshold to the multi-kW level even when including the non-linear interaction with the air in the core. A full model and experimental measurement of the SBS spectra is presented, including back-scatter into other optical modes besides the fundamental, and some of the issues of coupling high power into hollow-core fibers are discussed.