Investigation of high birefringence and chromatic dispersion management in photonic crystal fibre with square air holes

Abstract

In this article, a solid core photonic crystal fibre (PCF) with square air holes is proposed and numerically analysed. The confinement loss, the chromatic dispersion and the birefringence are calculated for both triangular and square lattices by using a full vector finite difference time domain (FV-FDTD) method and the perfectly matched layers (PML) boundary conditions. Two main applications are then investigated: high birefringence and chromatic dispersion management. For the first one, simulation results indicate that high birefringence of 2.5×10−3 is achieved at the wavelength 1.55μm with a very low bending loss of 1.8×10−3 dB/km for bent radius of 2mm. In the second application, ultra-flattened chromatic dispersion over a wide band of wavelengths from 1μm to 1.8μm can be obtained with both positive and negative regimes.