Abstract

We report on an innovative hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HC-PCF) based gas cell fabrication technique relying on the diffusion of helium gas through the silica walls of the fiber. Unlike the two existing techniques which are either limited to relatively high pressure gases (>50 mbar for a 5m long HCPCF) due to the exposure of the HC-PCF to the atmospheric pressure during the splicing procedure (~1 min) [1] or suffer from high optical loss due to the collapsed end (> l0dB splice loss) [2], the present technique offers low-insertion loss (1.8 dB) and gas-filling at low pressure levels (0.00lmbar or less).

© 2007 IEEE