Novel photonic guiding structures - analysis and measurements

This paper presents an analysis and measurements of periodic holey fibers which belong to a continuously growing group of novel photonic crystal fibers. To analyze the modal properties of these fibers the transverse electric field is decomposed into a series of orthogonal modes which are then used to solve the vector wave equation for optical fibers. Orthogonal functions used in the considered case were Hermite - Gaussian functions because a very small number of modes is needed to achieve reasonable accuracy. The results of this analysis for fiber under test are compared with the measurements performed and are found to be in a very good agreement. Furthermore, additional measurements of bending properties were performed showing that holey fibers have significantly lower bending losses compared to standard G.652 fibers that are mostly in use today.