Numerical Analysis of Index-Guiding Photonic Crystal Fibers with Low Confinement Loss and Ultra-Flattened Dispersion by FDFD Method

In this article, perfectly matched layer (PML) for the boundary treatment and an efficient compact two dimensional finite-difference frequency-domain (2-D FDFD) method were combined to model photonic crystal fibers (PCF). For photonic crystal fibers, if we assume that the propagation constant along the propagation direction is fixed, three-dimensional hybrid guided modes can be calculated by using only a two-dimensional mesh. An index-guiding PCF with an array of air-holes surrounding the silica core region has special characteristics compared with conventional single-mode fibers (SMFs). Using this model, the fundamental characteristics of single mode photonic crystal fibers (SMPCFs) such as confinement loss, bending loss, effective mode area and chromatic dispersion are numerically investigated. The results revealed that low confinement loss and zero-flattened chromatic dispersion can be obtained by varying the air-holes diameter of each ring along the PCF radius. In this work, an especial PCF with nearly zero-flattened dispersion (1.3 ps/nm/km) over a wide wavelength range which covers O, E, S, C, L and U telecommunication wavelength bands and low confinement loss (0.06 dB/km at 1.55μm) is designed. Macro-bending loss performance of the designed PCF is also studied and it is found that the fiber shows low bending losses for the smallest feasible bending radius of 5 mm. Also, it is revealed that the temperature sensitivity of PCFs is very low in compared with the conventional fibers.