Design and optimization of a novel broadband and polarization-insensitive dual-core photonic crystal fiber coupler over the whole optical communication band

Abstract

In this paper, a novel broadband polarization-insensitive dual-core photonic crystal fiber with elliptical central hole is proposed and the influence of its structural parameters on coupling characteristic is investigated in detail by the full-vector finite element method. Through optimizing the fiber structural parameters, broadband and polarization-insensitive characteristics are achieved over the whole optical communication band from 1.225 m to 1.675 m. The variation of coupling ratio is stabilized at 50% 1%, and the coupling ratio difference between x polarization and y polarization is less than 0.5% overall the wavelength range. Due to its relatively independent of cores and elliptical central hole and suitable structural parameters, this fiber meets the application requirements, that is, easy to fabricate, easy to splice and low splice loss. This research is freed from the current coupler limit: narrow bandwidth, wavelength dependence, polarization-sensitive, difficulty of fabricating, thereby provides the theoretical basis for the study of the large capacity high speed all-optical networks and multi-wavelength tunable fiber laser.