Simplified hollow-core photonic crystal fiber

An original design of hollow-core photonic crystal fiber composed of a thin silica ring suspended in air by six silica struts is proposed. This structure can be viewed as a simplified Kagome-lattice fiber reduced to one layer of air holes. By working on the core surround parameters, an efficient antiresonant air guiding was successfully demonstrated. Two large low-loss windows (visible/IR) were measured with a minimum attenuation less than 0.2 dB/m at yellow wavelengths, comparable with state-of-the-art designs. The curvature behavior was also studied, showing low bending loss sensitivity for the fundamental transmission band. These relevant features might open a new route to propose original hollow-core fiber designs while making their production simpler and faster than previously. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America