Simulation of low loss metamaterial based hollow core fiber for guiding mid-infrared (MIR) light

Abstract

There is a great deal of interest in mid-infrared (MIR) light in diverse fields including spectroscopy, biomedical-applications, medical surgery, and astronomy. Due to higher material absorption, MIR light transmission is generally more difficult than visible light or microwave radiation. Recently, hollow-core MIR fibers are one of the best possibilities among presented several innovations having low Transverse Magnetic (TM) mode losses, although they are many orders of magnitude than Transverse Electric (TE) modes. Studies also have found that metamaterial-based HCF offers excellent potential for transmitting MIR light because of its distinct and flexible optical properties. In this study, a metamaterial-based HCF with an optimized design that uses metal wires with subwavelength spacing embedded in dielectric host, and acts as an effective TM reflector is proposed. In the 3 to 12 μm wavelengths, the effects of the design parameters including shape, number, and spacing of metal wires, dielectric thickness, and the diameter of the core are extensively investigated using finite element method. It is observed that TM01 mode losses are the lowest and a noteworthy confinement loss of 4.69× 10−7 dB/m is found at 9.5 μm wavelength, with an average loss of 5.22× 10−5 dB/m found within the range 8–10 μm wavelength. As the wires are wrapped up in a dielectric, there is a preferred position of 4 μm from the core edge and a number of 40 metal wires that results in the least amount of losses. This analysis could help to design low-loss metamaterial based HCF for guiding MIR light.