Tapered hollow optical fibers with a xenon core For WDM applications

We are studying the loss and the dispersion compensation properties of tapered silica capillary for applications in multiwavelength optical communications. The 40-micron Xenon core (1.000702 refractive index) is confined by a 22-mm wall thickness silica capillary. The wall presents Fabry-Perot resonances at 55-nm intervals in the 1500-nm band. With resonances as sharp as 1.5 nm such capillaries could serve as stable inexpensive fibered Fabry-Perot reference filters and also serve as chromatic dispersion compensators. Helium gas (1.000035 refractive index) surrounds the capillary. Extensive numerical simulations and experimental results show that including gases in the core and the external medium allows low-loss propagation of the power and support monomode guidance. This new structure will provide strong dispersion compensation for this device.