Design of a photonic crystal fiber for optical communications application

The desire for photonic crystal fibers (PCF) with small mode areas that can be used in nonlinear optics and optical communications is a never-ending and a continuously evolving research quest. By deliberately varying the diameters of air-holes and spacing between holes, a PCF with possible application in optical communications and nonlinear optics is proposed. The zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) is easily tailored to be located around 1.55μm. A design of a PCF with high nonlinearity, reduced dispersion and reduced loss due to improper confinement of mode is investigated. The proposed PCF is designed and demonstrated through the commercially available FemSIM software which employs the full-vectorial finite element method. Among the properties demonstrated and analyzed are the; ZDW which is shown to be around 1.55μm, an effective mode area of 1.7256μm2 at 1.55μm are obtained.