Simulations of Effect of High-Index Materials on Highly Birefringent Photonic Crystal Fibres

Novel highly birefringent photonic bandgap fibres (PBGFs) are obtained by filling of a high index material in the air holes of total internal reflection birefringent photonic crystal fibres. The effect of the filling high index material on the transmission characteristics has been theoretically investigated. The photonic bandgap has been achieved by using plane-wave method. Moreover, the phase and group modal birefringence have been studied by a full-vector finite-element method. Numerical results show that very high group and phase modal birefringence with magnitude of order of 10^-2 and 10^-3 has been respectively acquired, which is much higher than those of the non-filled fibres. Furthermore, strong coupling between surface modes and the fundamental modes has been found in the bandgap of the birefringent PBGFs, whose effect on the birefringence and confinement loss has also been discussed.