Theoretical analysis of hollow ring-core optical fibre for transmitting orbital angular momentum modes

Abstract

Ring-core optical fibre has been successfully demonstrated to have good performance for lifting mode degeneracy, and maintaining orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes in the first radial order, making it promising for applications of OAM mode multiplexing and generation of cylindrical vector beams. The degeneracy lift can be intensified using a hollow ring-core fibre, i.e. when the innermost layer of waveguide is air. The cut-off ring thickness for supporting the lowest OAM modes in radial order are obtained under various refractive index differences between the transport layer and the cladding. To optimize the design, our analysis addresses the dependence of modal properties on the fibre structure parameters, such as the effective area (Aeff) of respective OAM mode, and the differential mode delay.