Ultrabroadband polarization splitter based on three-core photonic crystal fibers

Abstract

An ultrabroadband polarization splitter based on three-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed. Two fluorine-doped cores and an elliptical modulation core are introduced to achieve an excellent performance and an ultrawide bandwidth. Numerical results demonstrate that the polarization splitter based on three-core PCF has an extinction ratio as low as -20 dB bandwidth as great as 400 nm covering almost all communication bands (O, E, S, C, and L bands). Its Gaussian-like mode-field distributions and suitable effective mode areas make it highly compatible with the standard single-mode fibers. Due to using a uniform size of circular air holes and only one elliptical central air hole, the difficulty of fabrication can be decreased to some extent.