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It’s What’s Inside That Doesn’t Count: Photonics with Hollow-Core Fibers

Dr. Darren Hudson, Associate Professor of Optics and Photonics, CREOL 212

Presented in-person in Goergen 101 and on Zoom

Abstract

Hollow-core fibers (HCFs) have now advanced from a laboratory curiosity to a disruptive technology with real-world impact. By guiding light mostly in air, they overcome the fundamental limits of solid-core fibers, offering ultra-low latency transmission and tremendously reduced dispersion and nonlinearity relative to solid-core fiber. Recently, nested anti-resonant designs have led to this technology becoming the lowest loss waveguide ever, surpassing even the best solid-core, long-haul telecommunications fibers. HCFs are now being employed in next-generation data centers for AI due to their low-latency transmission.

At CREOL’s Nonlinear Fiber Dynamics Lab, we leverage our in-house fiber draw tower to design, fabricate, and test new generations of HCFs. By filling their cores with gases, we unlock strong nonlinear interactions that generate entirely new wavelengths of light—reaching spectral regions inaccessible to conventional glass fibers. At the same time, their relatively large mode area and weak interactions with glass make HCFs uniquely capable of delivering extreme levels of laser power, both in terms of average and peak intensity. This talk will trace the rise of hollow-core fibers from fundamental research to commercial deployment, and highlight how our lab is advancing their use in high-power beam delivery and nonlinear wavelength generation.

Biography

Dr. Darren Hudson is an Associate Professor at CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida. He earned B.S. degrees in physics and computer science from Centre College in Kentucky and his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado/JILA. Before joining CREOL in 2023, Dr. Hudson led the Multi-Spectral Laser Development Group as Senior Technical Manager at CACI-Photonic Solutions in New Jersey. His research focuses on the interaction of light and matter using optical fibers, aiming to develop next generation high-brightness laser sources for applications such as long-range LiDAR, remote sensing, free-space communications, and directed energy.