intensity of light that propagates through
glass optical fiber is fundamentally limited by
the glass itself. A novel fiber design using a
hollow, air-filled core removes this limitation
and dramatically improves performance by
forcing light to travel through channels of air,
instead of the glass around it. DARPA's unique
spider-web-like, hollow-core fiber, design is
the first to demonstrate single-spatial-mode,
low-loss and polarization control—key
properties needed for advanced military
applications such as high-precision fiber optic
gyroscopes for inertial navigation.
Although hollow-core fiber has been available
from overseas suppliers for years, DARPA's
ongoing Compact Ultra-Stable Gyro for
Absolute Reference (COUGAR) program has
brought design and production capacity inside
the United States and developed it to a level
that exceeds the state of the art.
A team of DARPA-funded researchers led by
Honeywell International Inc. developed the
technology. The hollow-core fiber is the first
to include three critical performance-enabling
properties:
Single-spatial-mode: light can take only a
single path, enabling higher bandwidth
over longer distances;
Low-loss: light maintains intensity over
longer distances;
Polarization control: the orientation of the
light waves is fixed in the fiber, which is
necessary for applications such as sensing,
interferometry and secure
communications.
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