Photonic Crystal Fiber With Large Mode Area and Characteristic Bending Properties

We report on a photonic crystal fiber with a large mode area designed for compact high power fiber lasers and amplifiers. The fiber suppresses higher order modes when bent around a 10-cm radius and enables single mode operation in small footprint laser and amplifier architectures. We experimentally confirm the peculiar bending properties of this fiber in its passive version, by reporting on the measurement results of fundamental mode loss in bent and straight fibers, and of the influence of the bending plane orientation on this fiber loss.