N.P. PHOTONICS, INC. SBIR Phase II Award, September 2020

Optical fibers with suppressed stimulated Brillouin scattering and other nonlinear effects are in great demand for high energy laser transmission over long distances in the DoD’s high energy laser systems. NP Photonics, in collaboration with Olkin Optics, proposes to design and fabricate anti-resonant hollow-core negative curvature fibers (NCFs) with ultra-low nonlinearity that can be used for high energy laser delivery. In the Phase I program, we have demonstrated our capability to fabricate hollow-core NCFs and the feasibility to make NCFs with propagation loss < 0.002 dB/m. In Phase II, we will optimize the designs of hollow-core NCFs and tremendously improve the technology to fabricate low propagation loss, low nonlinearity NCFs meeting or exceeding the requirements of the Navy’s applications.