Newly developed hollow-core photonic crystal fibers(HC-PCFs)have increasingly aroused intense research interests because of its unique wave-guiding properties based on the photonic band gap effect. Such fibers have been considered to be very important in applications of high-power delivering and controlling,optical signal processing,and next-generation photonic devices. Recent advances in HC-PCFs are reviewed,including progresses in both fundamental characteristics of mode-guiding,loss mechanism,dispersion and nonlinearities,and applications in high-power fiber-optic delivering,controlling ultra-short optical pulses propagation with dispersion and nonlinear management,nonlinear interactions between light and matters,optical communications and novel photonic devices.