Highly birefringent elliptical core photonic crystal fiber for terahertz application

We present a novel strategy for designing a highly birefringent photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with near zero flattened dispersion properties by applying elliptical air holes in the core area. The elliptical structure of the air holes in the porous-core region introduces asymmetry between x and y polarization modes, which consequently offers ultra-high birefringence. Also the compact geometry of the conventional hexagonal structure in the cladding confines most of the useful power. The optical properties including birefringence, dispersion, confinement loss, effective material loss (EML) and single modeness of the fiber are investigated using a full-vector finite element method. Simulation results show an ultra-high birefringence of 0.086 ultra-flattened near zero dispersion of 0.53 +/- 0.07 ps/THz/cm in a broad frequency range. The practical implementation of the proposed fiber is feasible using existing fabrication technology and is applicable to the areas of terahertz sensing and polarization maintaining systems. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.