Inflexible optical waveguide cane with core, cladding and jacket regions

摘要

An optical waveguide comprises an elongate, substantially inflexible microstructured cane (400) comprising a cladding region and a core region (together forming region 410) and a jacket region (420). The rigidity of the cane overcomes problems experienced with microstructured fibres, including "optical tweezer" effects (which make coupling of light into prior-art fibres difficult), bending losses and unwanted acoustic phonon effects.