Holey fibers: fundamentals and applications

Summary form only given. Holey fiber technology promises the development of fibers with a wide range of unique optical properties suitable for use in ultrafast optics applications. These include sources based on soliton effects (e.g. pulse compressors, wavelength tunable sources based on the soliton self frequency shift (SSFS)), and white light sources based on supercontinuum generation. Such fibers are also of interest for telecommunications applications. Holey fibers, with small holes and large hole spacings offer extremely large mode areas (and correspondingly low optical nonlinearities). Large mode area fibers have potential applications in high power optical delivery including laser welding and machining, and high power fiber lasers and amplifiers. Holey fiber technology is also of relevance to the production of doped fibers, as required for example in fiber laser and amplifier systems.