An illumination system generating light having at least one wavelength within 200 nm a plurality of nano-sized structures (e.g., voids). The optical fiber coupled to the light source. The light diffusing optical fiber has a core and a cladding. The plurality of nano-sized structures is situated either within said core or at a core-cladding boundary. The optical fiber also includes an outer surface. The optical fiber is configured to scatter guided light via the nano-sized structures away from the core and through the outer surface, to form a light-source fiber portion having a length that emits substantially uniform radiation over its length, said fiber having a scattering-induced attenuation greater than 50 dB/km for the wavelength(s) within 200 nm to 2000 nm range.

A delivery fiber assembly suitable for delivering broad band light and including a delivery fiber and a connector member. The delivery fiber has a length, an input end for launching light, and a delivery end. The delivery fiber includes along its length a core region and a cladding region surrounding the core region, the cladding region includes a cladding background material having a refractive index N.sub.bg and a plurality of microstructures in the form of inclusions of solid material having refractive index up to N.sub.inc and extending in the length of the longitudinal axis of the delivery fiber, wherein N.sub.inc<N.sub.bg. The plurality of inclusions in the cladding region is arranged in a cross-sectional pattern including at least two rings of inclusions surrounding the core region. The connector member is mounted to the delivery fiber at a delivery end section of the delivery fiber including the delivery end.

Described are optical fibers and scanning fiber displays comprising optical fibers. The disclosed optical fibers include a plurality of mass adjustment regions, such as gas-filled regions, positioned between a central waveguiding element and an outer periphery for reducing a mass of the optical fiber as compared to an optical fiber lacking the plurality of mass adjustment regions.

Disclosed is a Chinese knot-like porous fiber core ultra-high birefringence THz optical fiber. The optical fiber comprises a substrate, claddings and fiber cores, wherein the claddings and the fiber cores are arranged in the substrate, and the fiber cores are embedded in the centers of the claddings; and the fiber core comprises a first fiber core region, a second fiber core region and a third fiber core region, the center of the first fiber core region 4 serves as the origin of coordinates, and the first fiber core region 4 is composed of six regular hexagon units with overlapped boundaries in the x-axis direction. In the present disclosure, the fiber core comprises a first fiber core region, a second fiber core region and a third fiber core region, and the three regions jointly form a fiber core region of a Chinese knot-like porous fiber core.

A method of processing by controlling one or more beam characteristics of an optical beam may include: launching the optical beam into a first length of fiber having a first refractive-index profile (RIP); coupling the optical beam from the first length of fiber into a second length of fiber having a second RIP and one or more confinement regions; modifying the one or more beam characteristics of the optical beam in the first length of fiber, in the second length of fiber, or in the first and second lengths of fiber; confining the modified one or more beam characteristics of the optical beam within the one or more confinement regions of the second length of fiber; and/or generating an output beam, having the modified one or more beam characteristics of the optical beam, from the second length of fiber. The first RIP may differ from the second RIP.

An anti-torsion solid-core polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber includes a cladding having an inner layer arranged around the core and an outer layer between the inner layer and the outer wall of the cladding. The inner layer has multi-layer air holes used to construct optical properties and two micron-size air holes arranged along the x-axis extending in the center producing form birefringence. The outer layer includes multi-layer air holes arranged radially along the y-axis. The size and arrangement of the multi-layer air holes in the outer layer cause the bending stiffness of the photonic crystal fiber along the x-axis to be different from that along the y-axis. While meeting the requirements of the optical properties of the fiber, the photonic crystal fiber possesses an anti-torsion ability due to the anisotropy of stress distribution in the radial direction, thereby reducing the non-reciprocal phase difference generated by the magneto-optic Faraday Effect.

The glass-based THz optical waveguides (10) disclosed herein are used to guide optical signals having a THz frequency in the range from 0.1 THz to (10) THz and include a core (20) surrounded by a cladding (30). The core has a diameter D1 in the range from (30) μm to 10 mm and is made of fused silica glass having a refractive index n.sub.1. The cladding is made of either a polymer or a glass or glass soot and has a refractive index n.sub.2<n.sub.1 and an outer diameter D2 in the range from 100 μm to 12 mm. The THz optical waveguides can be formed using processes that are extensions of either fiber, ceramic and soot-based technologies. In an example, the THz waveguides have a dielectric loss D.sub.f<0.005 at 100 GHz.

An object of the present invention is to provide an HAF having a structure in which the number of air holes is decreased to be smaller than that of a PCF and Rayleigh scattering loss may be more reduced than that in the existing HAF. The HAF according to the present invention includes a core portion having a uniform optical refractive index; a cladding portion having a uniform optical refractive index and surrounding the core portion; and a plurality of air holes arranged in two layers at positions configuring hexagonal closest packing excluding the core portion within the cladding portion along a longitudinal direction of the hole-assisted fiber, wherein a center-to-center spacing of the air holes is a sum of a radius Rin of an inscribed circle inscribed in the air holes in an inner layer and a radius d/2 of the air hole, and a radius “a” of the core portion and a relative refractive index difference Δ between the core portion and the cladding portion are present within a range where Rn, which is a ratio of a Rayleigh scattering coefficient Rsmf of a single mode optical fiber and an effective Rayleigh scattering coefficient Reff of the hole-assisted fiber, is equal to or less than 0.92.

This disclosure relates to an MCF fiber being usable for short-haul O-band transmission, having a standard coating diameter in an MFD almost the same as that of a general-purpose SMF, being capable of splicing fibers without either a marker or a polarity, and including 12 cores usable for counter propagation. The MCF includes 12 cores and a common cladding, and the common cladding has an outer periphery with a circular cross-section, the 12 cores are arranged such that no adjacent relationship is established between cores each having an adjacent relationship with any core, and are arranged such that centers of the 12 cores are line symmetric with respect to an axis as a symmetry axis that intersects with the central axis and that passes through none of the centers of the 12 cores, and an arrangement of the centers of the 12 cores has rotational symmetry once.

A microstructured optical fiber having a length and a longitudinal axis along its length, the finer including a core region capable of guiding light along the longitudinal axis and a cladding region which surrounds the core region, the cladding region comprising a cladding background material and a plurality of cladding features within the cladding background material, the cladding features being arranged around the core region, wherein the cladding region comprises an inner cladding region comprising an innermost ring of cladding features and an outer cladding region comprises outer cladding rings of outer cladding features, the innermost ring consisting of those cladding features being closest to the core region, wherein the rings of cladding features each comprise bridges of cladding background material separating adjacent features of the ring, wherein the bridges of the innermost ring have an average minimum width (w1), the minimum width of a bridge of a ring being the shortest distance between two adjacent features of the ring; and wherein at least one outer cladding ring has an average minimum width (w2) of bridges that is larger than the average minimum width (w1) of the bridges of the innermost ring. Also described are a cascade optical fiber with at least one fiber as described, as well as a source of supercontinuum radiation.