Twisted Silica Few-Mode Hollow GeO₂-Doped Ring-Core Microstructured Optical Fiber

This work presents the first instance of a silica few-mode microstructured optical fiber (MOF) being successfully fabricated with a hollow GeO2-doped ring core and by strongly inducing twisting up to 790 revolutions per meter. Some technological issues that occurred during the manufacturing of the GeO2-doped supporting elements for the large hollow cores are also described, which complicated the spinning of the MOFs discussed above. We also provide the results of the tests performed for the pilot samples-designed and manufactured using the untwisted and twisted MOFs described above-which were characterized by an outer diameter of 65 & mu;m, a hollow ring core with an inner diameter of 30.5 & mu;m, under a wall thickness of 1.7 & mu;m, and a refractive index difference of & UDelta;n = 0.030. Moreover, their geometrical parameters, basic transmission characteristics, and the measurements of the far-field laser beam profile patterns are also provided.