Scientists at the University of Southampton have developed a radical new hollow-core optical fiber that carries light through air instead of solid glass. The result? Data that moves faster, farther, and with a thousand times more transmission power than today's networks can handle. Hollow-core optical fibers (HCFs) have unique properties like low latency, negligible optical nonlinearity, wide low-loss spectrum, up to 2100 nm, the ability to carry high power, and potentially lower loss then solid-core single-mode fibers (SMFs). However, glass imposes a fundamental physical limitation because light travels through it approximately 30 percent slower than through air. Recent advances in reducing optical losses and the prospects for telecommunication applications of hollow-core fibers, issues of transporting high-intensity optical radiation, and results on nonlinear compression and the generation of ultrashort pulses in gas-filled hollow-core fibers are reviewed. This isn't just. In addition to beating conventional telecom fiber on loss and latency, hollow-core fibers are enabling new approaches to applications like sensing, fiber lasers and optical tweezers.
