Broadband Single-Polarization Single-Mode Photonic Crystal Fiber Coupler

Abstract

In this letter, a novel design for a photonic crystal fiber coupler with single-polarization single-mode (SPSM) functionality is proposed and investigated using a vector plane-wave expansion method and a vector finite-element method. We study the changes in the coupling lengths between the two orthogonal polarizations and the width of the SPSM coupling region with respect to the air-hole parameters. We demonstrate that the SPSM coupling range can be more than 200 nm wide for a variety of air-hole parameters and show that the position and width of the SPSM coupling region can be tailored via the diameters of the large inner air holes and the small cladding air holes