Design of Wideband Single-Polarization Single-Mode Photonic Crystal Fiber

Abstract

The present paper proposes a novel design for achieving single-polarization single-mode (SPSM) operation in photonic crystal fiber (PCF), using a rectangular-lattice PCF with two lines of three central air holes enlarged. The proposed PCF that is composed entirely of silica material is modeled by a full-vector finite element method with anisotropic perfectly matched layers. The position of the region of single polarization can be tuned freely by adjusting the size of the central enlarged air holes. Using this structure, an SPSM PCF with confinement loss less than 0.1 dB/km within the wavelength range from 1.20 to 1.66 mum and effective mode area about 5.9 mum <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> at 1.55 mum has been successfully designed. The proposed fiber is a nonlinear SPSM, which may be useful for nonlinear optical applications or applications with a wide SPSM operating bandwidth requirement