Core opportunities for future optical fibers

Abstract

Abstract Hair-thin strands of glass, intrinsically transparent and strong, of which many millions of kilometers are made annually, connect the world in ways unimaginable 50 years ago. What could another 50 years bring? That question is the theme of this Perspective. The first optical fibers were passive low-loss conduits for light, empowered by sophisticated sources and signal processing; a second advance was the addition of dopants utilizing atomic energy levels to promote amplification, and a third major initiative was physical structuring of the core-clad combinations, using the baseline silica material. Recent results suggest that the next major expansions in fiber performance and devices are likely to utilize different materials in the core, inhomogeneous structures on different length scales, or some combination of these. In particular, fibers with crystalline cores offer an extended transparency range with strong optical nonlinearities and open the door to hybrid opto-electronic devices. Opportunities for future optical fiber that derive from micro- and macro-structuring of the core phase offer some unique possibilities in ‘scattering by design’.