Design and fabrication of hollow-core photonic crystal fibers for high power fast laser beam transportation and pulse compression

We report on recent design and fabrication of Kagome type hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HC-PCF) for the purpose of high power fast laser beam transportation. The fabricated seven-cell three-ring hypocycloid-shaped large core fiber exhibits an up-to-date lowest attenuation (among all Kagome fibers) of 40dB/km over a broadband transmission centered at 1500nm. We show that the large core size, low attenuation, broadband transmission, single modedness, low dispersion and relatively low banding loss makes it an ideal host for high power laser beam transportation. By filling the fiber with helium gas, a 74μJ, 850fs and 40kHz repetition rate ultra-short pulse at 1550nm has been faithfully delivered with little propagation pulse distortion. Compression of a 105μJ laser pulse from 850fs to 300fs has been achieved by operating the fiber in ambient air.