Abstract
The present paper describes a novel systematic solution to the challenging task of realizing photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) with flat chromatic dispersion, low leakage losses, and large mode area, mainly for applications as information carriers in wide-band high speed optical transmission systems. The proposed design strategy is based on the existence of an artificially-defected air-hole ring in the cladding and on the modulation of the refractive index of the core by assembling additional defected air-holes in the central core region of the fiber. The validation of the proposed design is carried out by adopting an efficient full-vectorial finite element method with perfectly matched layers for accurate characterization of PCFs. The remarkable flat chromatic dispersion as well as the large mode area and the low leakage losses are the main advantages of the proposed PCF structure, making it an ideal candidate for performing wavelength division multiplexing operation in reconfigurable optical transmission systems or as an information delivering platform in high speed optical communication systems. Typical characteristics of the newly proposed PCF are: flattened chromatic dispersion of 6.3+/-0.5 ps/km/nm in the S+C+L telecommunication band, and effective mode area as large as 100 microm(2) in the same wavelength range. We additionally provide numerical data about the performance of the proposed PCF in splicing mode as well as during macrobending operation and we give qualitative information regarding the sensitivity of the proposed transmission platform to structural disorders of the design parameters.
Highlights
Optical fibers which can transmit the information in the form of short optical pulses over long distances have revolutionized telecommunication industry in the last two decades [1]
In particular the propagation of light-waves in periodic and disordered dielectric systems has attracted considerably attention in recent years and as a result of extensive studies performed by many researchers all around the world, a new class of optical fibers that enables light to be controlled in ways not previously possible or even imaginable has emerged, known as photonic crystal fiber (PCF) [2]
In the previous sections we have theoretically demonstrated that a PCF having exceptional chromatic dispersion flatness, as well as large effective mode area and low leakage losses in the S+C+L telecommunication band, could be realized using the intriguing approach of incorporating artificial defects into the core and the cladding of a PCF
Summary
Optical fibers which can transmit the information in the form of short optical pulses over long distances have revolutionized telecommunication industry in the last two decades [1]. To the best of our knowledge the task to engineer dispersion flattened PCFs with large mode area and low leakage losses at the same time, useful in designing high speed communication systems based on wavelength division multiplexing [13] has not been reported so far. Since such a class of PCFs will be an important break-through in realizing modern reconfigurable optical communication systems, we devote the present paper to describe an intriguing design approach for realizing a novel type of PCF having all the above mentioned characteristics, that is ultra-flattened chromatic dispersion, large mode area as well as low leakage losses.
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