Design and Characterization of Highly Birefringent Residual Dispersion Compensating Photonic Crystal Fiber

A residual dispersion compensating octagonal photonic crystal fiber (OPCF), with an elliptical array of circular air-holes in the fiber core region, is proposed. The full-vector finite-element method with perfectly matched layer boundary is used as the analysis tool. It is demonstrated that it is possible to obtain large average negative dispersion of -562.52 ps/(nm · km) over 240 nm and -369.10 ps/(nm · km) over 630 nm wavelength bands for the fast and the slow axis, respectively. In addition to large negative dispersion, ultra-high birefringence, high nonlinearity, and zero-dispersion wavelengths with low confinement loss are also warranted. The proposed OPCFs would be a promising candidate for residual dispersion compensation, supercontinuum generation, and other applications.