Fabrication of multiple parallel suspended-core optical fibers by sheet-stacking

•We demonstrate a novel optical fiber with multiple parallel air-suspended cores fabricated by the sheet-stacking method.•No extra scattering loss from the fabrication process was observed in a fabricated dual air-suspended core fiber.•We propose to use the multiple parallel suspended-core fibers as an optical fiber device for tuning dispersion.•Fusion splicing has been successfully used to connect such a multiple suspended core fiber with a conventional silica fiber.

We demonstrate the fabrication of a novel type of optical fibers with multiple parallel air-suspended cores by the sheet-stacking method. Using this technique we have constructed optical fibers with up to 10 parallel micron-size suspended cores. No extra scattering loss from the fabrication process was observed in a fabricated dual air-suspended core fiber. The sheet-stacking method opens the way towards using a wide range of optical glasses for manufacturing multiple parallel suspended-core specialty optical fibers with novel optical functionalities such as dispersion tunability. Fusion splicing has also been successfully used to connect such a multiple core fiber with a conventional silica fiber.