Transmission of CO2 Laser Radiation Through Glass Hollow Core Microstructured Fibers

In this chapter we would like to highlight and analyze the main problems of transmission and propagation of CO2 laser radiation in the hollow core microstructured fibers (HC MFs). It is well known that there is a strong need for the fiber delivery systems for 10.6 μm CO2 lasers due to a wide range of CO2 laser applications in medicine, spectrometry, industry, military applications and in other fields of science and technology. Research into the possibility of the mid IR laser radiation transmission (especially, CO and CO2 lasers) with the help of optical fibers as well as with crystalline or glass cores made of different materials has been going hand with hand with the technological development. However, until recently these fibers haven’t been used for industrial applications due to a relatively high level of optical losses at the lasers wavelengths and certain physicochemical properties of the fiber materials. These problems mainly arise from a low laser damage threshold, low melting temperatures of most IR transmitting materials and their high nonlinearity.