Abstract
A novel highly birefringent photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed based on a lattice structure of three-hole units. The three air holes in a line form the basic unit of the PCF which effectively acts as one elliptical air hole. The proposed PCF can achieve high birefringence similar to the elliptical air hole PCF with the same air-filling fraction. Properties such as birefringence, confinement loss, and mode area of the proposed PCF based three-hole units are investigated and compared with the elliptical air hole PCF and double-hole PCF. Our simulations show that the birefringence of the proposed PCF can be up to an order of 0.01 at low normalized frequency, and the size of the central air hole of the three air holes plays an important role in achieving the highest birefringence of the proposed PCF.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported partially by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61007029), Projects of Zhejiang Province (Nos. 2011C21038, 2011C22051, 2010R50007, and Y1100041), the Open Project of the State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics and Program for Science, and the Program for Science and Technology Innovative Research Team in Zhejiang Normal University.