First demonstration of thermal poling in holey fibres

Summary form only given. Thermal poling, first demonstrated in bulk silica-glass, is a well established technique for creating a second order optical nonlinearity (/spl chi//sup (2)/) in centro-symmetric materials. Soon after the first demonstration in bulk glass, a /spl chi//sup (2)/ in thermally poled germano-silicate fibre was reported. Despite the relatively low /spl chi//sup (2)/ of 1 pm/V poled fibres represent an extremely attractive nonlinear medium, offering major advantages over more established crystalline materials in terms of waveguide length, damage threshold, loss and fabrication cost. Holey fibres (HF), also commonly known as photonic crystal fibres, offer exciting new possibilities for the development of single material SHG waveguides with unique properties.