Abstract

Liquid-core fibres (LCF) which combine long interaction lengths and strong field confinement to enhance the nonlinear fluid-optic interactions are currently attracting much interest [1, 2]. The resurgence in this field is in part due to the ever increasing array of fibre templates (principally the microstructured designs) in which to infiltrate the materials, but also due to recent efforts to fully integrate the LCFs with standard single mode fibres (SMF) [1], thus improving the efficiency as well as the robustness of the devices. An extension to this work which allows for further enhancement of the nonlinear processes, as well as tailoring of the dispersion properties, is to employ tapered hollow core fibre (HCF) designs. Here we present the first results on the fabrication and characterization of a tapered liquid-core all-fibre optical device (TLC-AFOD) and subsequently demonstrate its use for low threshold stimulated Raman scattering in toluene.

© 2013 IEEE