Achieving both high birefringence and low leakage loss in double-clad photonic crystal fibers

In this paper, a novel double-clad photonic crystal fiber (DC-PCF) is proposed for achieving both high birefringence and low leakage loss. According to numerical simulation of the proposed PCF, the extraordinarily high birefringence (over 2×10−2) and low leakage loss of the order of 0.0001 dB/km over a large wavelength range are achieved simultaneously. Single-polarization single-mode (SPSM) operation with low leakage loss is also discussed and can be realized and optimized in the PCF by adopting suitable structure parameters.