Form-induced birefringence in elliptical hollow photonic crystal fiber with large mode area

Abstract

We propose a novel type of photonic crystal fiber (PCF), including an elliptical hole in its solid core. We prove the feasibility of such a fiber and investigate both experimentally and theoretically the dependence of its group birefringence on the geometric hole parameters. We show, for the first time, that form-induced birefringence can be achieved in single mode PCFs with large mode area and suggest it as a possible route for the development of polarization maintaining PCF-based LMA fiber devices.