The society of the former doctoral candidates of the IFSW (VEDIS) has awarded this year’s price for the best master thesis to Mr. Tim Kühlthau. The topic of his master's thesis is: Fabrication of hollow core fibers for beam delivery of laser beams with high brilliance.
Mr. Kühlthau investigated the manufacturing process of hollow-core glass fibers with tubular structure, which guide light by means of the "inhibited coupling" principle. Hollow-core fibers are currently the only known possibility to realize flexible guiding of ultrashort laser pulses.
The complete process chain starting from fused silica tubes via preforms and canes up to the finished fiber was investigated and optimized both experimentally and by means of simulations. Special attention was paid to the production of canes for the fiber preforms, since this process step is hardly mentioned in the literature, but is of utmost importance for the quality of the fibers. A significant increase in the quality of the fibers produced was achieved in the course of the work.