Designing multi-mode anti-resonant hollow-core fibers for industrial laser power delivery

Abstract

We investigate the design of hollow-core fibers for the delivery of 10s of kilowatt average power from multi-mode laser sources. For such lasers, delivery through solid-core fibers is typically limited by nonlinear optical effects to 10s of meters of distance. Techniques are presented here for the design of multi-mode anti-resonant fibers that can efficiently couple and transmit light from these lasers. By numerical simulation we analyze the performance of two anti-resonant fibers targeting continuous-wave lasers with M2 up to 13 and find they are capable of delivering MW-level power over several kilometers with low leakage loss, and at bend radii as small as 35 cm. Pulsed lasers are also investigated and numerical simulations indicate that optimized fibers could in principle deliver nanosecond pulses with greater than 100 mJ pulse energy over distances up to 1 km. This would be orders of magnitude higher power and longer distances than in typical machining applications using the best available solid core fibers.