Highly birefringent photonic crystal fibers with flattened dispersion and low effective mode area

A highly birefringent index-guiding photonic crystal fibers with flattened dispersion and low effective area is proposed by introducing elliptical air holes in the cladding and small holes both in the core area and in the cladding. With the plane wave expansion (PWE) method, the birefringent, dispersion and effective area of the fundamental modes in such photonic crystal fibers are analyzed in detail. The simulation result shows that high birefringence with a magnitude of the order of 10−3, flattened chromatic dispersion from 1100 nm to 1800 nm and low effective area (which mean high nonlinearity) are obtained. Furthermore, the influences on the birefringence and dispersion by geometrical parameters have also been discussed and a modest number of design parameters are given.