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Fused Silica core optical fibers are capable of conducting very high laser energy under cw, average power and pulsed power levels. The actual allowable maximum energies are dependant on:

Fibre Quality
Fused Silica (SiO2) with lowest contaminants has the highest power handling capabilities

Fibre face polishing at both the input and the output ends
The polishing procedure must ensure that there are not any sub-surface flaws remaining from the grinding and polishing of the fibre ends. The final polishing step should use polishing particles that are a small fraction of the operating wavelength such as 0.1µm.

Laser wavelength, intensity level and mode distribution
The damage threshold of the fibres is less at shorter wavelengths.

Fibre mounting
Fibre mounting at both the input and output should use thermally resistant buffers and epoxies to handle any thermal biuld up.

Cleanliness conditions
Dust particles on the fibre face introduce hot-spots that may lead to catastrophic failures.

Fibre core diameter
Power handling is proportional to core area, ie diameter squared. Maximum cw power handling is usually constrained by thermal consideration. With good polishing, alignment, and cleanliness conditions cw powers should be limited to about 126kW/cm2 at wavelengths of greater than 500 nm. Under very carefully controlled conditions including special cooling these levels can be increased by a factor of 3- 3.5.

Fibre Core Diameter / CW power Limitation

Fibre Core Diameter
(µm)

CW Power Limitation
(watts)

50

2.0

100

8.0

200

32

400

128

600

288

1000

800

High-Power laser transmission cables