Design of a Photonic Crystal Fiber with an Air Core for Tailoring of the Chromatic Dispersion and the Effective Area by Sizing the Core Hole

Abstract

A photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with a core hole is designed and analyzed numerically based on the finite difference and the finite-difference time-domain technique. An investigation of the propagation properties by changing the radius of the central air hole is performed and a PCF with r = 0.25 mu m is found to provide not only near-zero flattened chromatic dispersion but also a small effective area for the fundamental mode around an operation wavelength of 1.3 mu m. The two numerical techniques allow cross-verification of and confidence in the accuracy of the results.