Polarization properties of photonic crystal fibers considering thermal and external stress effects

Analysis of the effects of thermal and external stress on the properties of solid core photonic crystal fibers has been carried out in this work by using the finite element method. The external stress acting on the fiber induces a specific stress distribution on the fiber´s cross section making the isotropic fiber material birefringent. The effective index of the fiber under stress decreases almost linearly with a significant increase in the birefringence over a wide operating wavelength (0.7¿m-2.0¿m). With the increase of the wavelength at all considered external stress (up to 4GPa), the polarization mode dispersion decreases almost linearly. The study shows that the dispersion in the photonic crystal fiber exhibits anomalous values, revealing that at specific value of external stress, the fiber exhibits specific dispersion values. Thus, the photonic crystal fiber has got tremendous potential to be used as dispersion compensating device in the field of optical communications and other fields of applications.