Development and applications of dispersion controlled high nonlinearity microstructured fibres

In this thesis I investigate aspects of dispersion controlled high nonlinearity all silica holey fibre, including design, fabrication, sample applications, and modelling. The latest work has been focussed on controlled structural variation of holey fibres along their length to obtain fibre with a longitudinal variation of dispersion and nonlinearity. I fabricated a dispersion-decreasing holey fibre and performed the first demonstration of soliton compression in a holey fibre. A compression factor of 2 has been achieved with pJ pulses at 1.06 μm. Further numerical modelling has been carried out from a holey fibre design contour map, to optimize holey fibre tapers for soliton compression at 1.55 μm. A compression factor of 6 is possible in a 15-m holey fibre taper with a loss of 0.1 dB/m.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo