Investigation of longitudinal uniformity of the core structure in a hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber

In this study, a low-noise Fabry–Perot interference-based method is promoted to measure the longitudinal uniformity of the distance between six pairs of opposite silica–air interfaces within the core of a seven-cell hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber. The experimental results demonstrate that the precision of the method is improved to the subnanometer scale. Based on the test results, a model is established to study the effect of the longitudinal uniformity of the core structure on the fiber loss, and the simulation results indicate that the fiber loss could reach ∼22.73 dB/km, which is consistent with the practical loss value.