一种高品质中空金属光波导

讨论了高品质中空金属光波导的工作原理及其制作工艺，制备了以金和银作为波导材料的中空波导管，并对空芯以及充入不同透明液体的液芯波导的透光特性进行了测试，结果表明：与中空介质波导相比，中空金属波导具有光传输损耗低，透过率对波导弯曲与失调不甚敏感等优点；而液芯金属波导的透光效率与透明材料的折射系数无关。文中描述了在特定波段内“中空光纤”的原理，并报道了Ｈｅ－Ｎｅ和ＣＯ２激光在中空金壁波导传输的实验结果。

A High Quality Hollow Metallic Optical Waveguide

Properties of an optical quality circular metallic hollow waveguide are discussed and the technique for fabricating such a waveguide is decribed. The waveguide with gold or silver as the waveguide cladding material exhibits the characteristics of low propagation loss, transmission insensative to waveguide bending and misalignment, and capability of transmitting high power light from visible to far infrared. It is demonstrated that transmission of He Ne laser is independent of the refractive index of the liquid filled into a gold hollow waveguide, and this characteristic greatly extends the nonlinear waveguide applications. The mechanism for a “hollow fiber” in the 10.6 μm spectral region is discussed and results of propagation of CO2 laser through a gold hollow waveguide are presented.