Analysis of a photonic crystal fiber with ellipse air-holes for supporting 82 orbital angular momentum modes

Abstract

We proposed a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with ellipse air holes and high refractive index ring-core, which can stably support 82 orbital angular momentum states from the wavelength of 1.25–1.65 μm. The modes’ average confinement loss keeps as low as 10−9 dB m−1. In addition, the effective refractive index separation (Δn eff) between HE m +1,1 and EH m −1,1 (m = 2–21) is up to 10−3, which makes the mode degeneracy to LP mode can be almost neglected. The dispersion curves of low order eigenmodes are low and flat, especially at the wavelength of 1.4 μm the minimum absolute value of chromatic dispersion for HE1,1 mode is as low as 0.246 ps (nm·km)−1. Furthermore, we also analyze the effect of ellipticity change on the cladding air holes, which instructively show the favorable fault tolerance of confinement loss and dispersion. The proposed PCF structure will be a potential candidate for high-capacity optical fiber communications.