AUTHORS:

Kasztelanic R., Nguyen H.T., Pysz D., Thienpont H., Omatsu T., Buczynski R.

ABSTRACT:

The development of bend-induced effectively single-mode fiber with a square cross-section and flat top-hat intensity distribution is reported using core topology nanostructuring dedicated to femtosecond laser ablation systems. The fiber's core comprises 5419 silica and germanium-doped silica nanorods with a diameter of 430 nm each arranged into a hexagonal lattice. The distribution of the rods is calculated using in-house developed code based on the Monte Carlo algorithm to obtain a target shape of mode and intensity distribution. As a proof-of-concept, a silica nanostructured fiber with a 24 µm core is developed and verified against the purity of mode guidance, bending, and guiding losses. It is shown that for a wavelength of 1030 nm, the fiber is effectively single-mode with 96% mode purity when bending with a radius of 20 cm is applied. The fiber has a measured mode area of 360 µm², numerical aperture of 0.03, and total losses of 0.07 dB m⁻¹.

Advanced Science, 2024, vol. 11(33), art. 2402886, doi: 10.1002/advs.202402886