Analysis of a highly birefringent photonic crystal fiber with ellipse–rhombus air core

Abstract

A novel highly birefringent photonic crystal fiber with small effective mode area is proposed. Four elliptical air-holes are designed in the internal layer of the fiber to cause the anisotropy, and the fiber has the property of highly birefringence and small effective mode area. The influences of elliptical air-holes on effective index, birefringence, effective mode area and nonlinear coefficient are analyzed by using full-vector finite element method (FEM). Simulation results show the birefringence can achieve the magnitude of 10−3 under the condition of d>2.3μm and a>1.4μm, which d and a are the distance and semimajor axis of elliptical air holes. By adjusting the parameters d and a, different effective mode area and nonlinear coefficient can be obtained, which demonstrates the flexibility of the proposed photonic crystal fiber.