Shailendra K. Varshney

Novel design of inherently gain-flattened discrete highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber Raman amplifier and dispersion compensation using a single pump in C-band.

In this paper, we report, for the first time, an inherently gain-flattened discrete highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (HNPCF) Raman amplifier (HNPCF-RA) design which shows 13.7 dB of net gain (with +/-0.85-dB gain ripple) over 28-nm bandwidth. The wavelength dependent leakage loss property of HNPCF is used to flatten the Raman gain of the amplifier module. The PCF structural design is based on W-shaped refractive index profile where the fiber parameters are well optimized by homely developed genetic algorithm optimization tool integrated with an efficient vectorial finite element method (V-FEM). The proposed fiber design has a high Raman gain efficiency of 4.88 W(-1) . km(-1) at a frequency shift of 13.1 THz, which is precisely evaluated through V-FEM. Additionally, the designed module, which shows ultra-wide single mode operation, has a slowly varying negative dispersion coefficient (-107.5 ps/nm/km at 1550 nm) over the operating range of wavelengths. Therefore, our proposed HNPCF-RA module acts as a composite amplifier with dispersion compensator functionality in a single component using a single pump.

A novel design for dispersion compensating photonic crystal fiber Raman amplifier

This letter presents a novel design for dispersion compensating photonic crystal fiber (DCPCF) which shows inherently flattened high Raman gain of 19 dB (/spl plusmn/1.2-dB gain ripple) over 30-nm bandwidth. The proposed design module has been simulated through an efficient full-vectorial finite element method. The designed DCPCF has a high negative dispersion coefficient (-200 to -250 ps/nm/km) over C-band wavelength (1530-1568 nm). The proposed fiber module of 5.2-km length not only compensates the accumulated dispersion in conventional single-mode fiber (SMF-28) but also compensates for the dispersion slope. Hence, the designed DCPCF module acts as the gain-flattened Raman amplifier and dispersion compensator.

Design and analysis of a broadband dispersion compensating photonic crystal fiber Raman amplifier operating in S-band

This paper presents an optimized design of a dispersion compensating photonic crystal fiber (PCF) to achieve gain-flattened Raman performances over S-band using a single pump. Genetic algorithm interfaced with an efficient full-vectorial finite element modal solver based on curvilinear edge/nodal elements is used as an optimization tool for an accurate determination of PCF design parameters. The designed PCF shows high negative dispersion coefficient (-264 ps/nm/km to -1410 ps/nm/km) and negative dispersion slope, providing coarse dispersion compensation over the entire S-band. The module comprised of 1.45-km long optimized PCF exhibits +/-0.46 dB gain ripples over 50 nm wide bandwidth and shows a very low double Rayleigh backscattering value (-59.8 dB). The proposed module can compensate for the dispersion accumulated in one span (80-km) of standard single mode fiber with a residual dispersion of +/-700 ps/nm, ensuring its applicability for 10 Gb/s WDM networks. Additionally, the designed PCF remains single mode over the range of operating wavelengths.

Propagation characteristics of photonic crystal fibers

The paper presents salient features of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) at one place. Effective index model is used to study propagation characteristics of PCFs. The propagation parameters such as dispersion, spot size, splice loss and bend loss are studied for various designs of PCFs. The wavelength dependence of refractive index of silica has been included in all calculations.

Coupling Characteristics of Multicore Photonic Crystal Fiber-Based 1

A new design of multicore photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) is proposed and investigated through full-vectorial finite-element method and finite-element beam propagation method. The fiber design comprises four identical cores surrounding a central core. The optical power launched into the central core is equally divided into other neighboring four cores with a 25% of coupling ratio. The coupled-mode analysis is also carried out to understand the supermode patterns and the coupling characteristics. Through numerical simulations, it is demonstrated that the optical power can be divided equally in a 5.8-mm-long multicore PCF. The power coupling characteristics obtained through coupled-mode analysis are in very good agreement with those calculated from beam propagation method solver.

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We theoretically address the thermo-optical response of multicore photonic crystal fiber (PCF) couplers infiltrated with nematic liquid crystals (LCs). The proposed PCF coupler consists of two identical cores separated by a third one which acts as a liquid crystal resonator. With an appropriate choice of the design parameters associated with the liquid crystal core, phase matching at a single wavelength can be achieved, thus enabling thermo-tunable narrow-band resonant directional coupling between the input and the output cores. The verification of the proposed coupler design is ensured through an accurate PCF analysis based on finite element and beam propagation methods. The enhanced thermo-optical properties of LC-based PCF couplers are highly attractive for photo-thermal sensing applications.

4 Power Splitters

We study the application of capillary optical fibers to attain a large effective mode area for nonlinearity suppression in high-power lasers and amplifiers. The effect of the inclusion of an air capillary on the modal properties of a conventional optical fiber, such as the effective index of the guided modes, is calculated using fully vectorial analytical techniques and verified using the finite element method. It is illustrated that our design transcends the recently predicted limit on the effective mode area obtainable in conventional optical fibers at 1064 nm. The influence of bending on the mode area is investigated in detail. We further propose alternative designs, such as the depressed-clad capillary optical fiber and the trench-assisted capillary optical fiber, and we carry out simulations to show how they can be used to reduce losses in optical fibers. The variation of the fractional power contained within the capillary is calculated to determine the effect on nonlinearity suppression. We also show that by including a nanosized air capillary in the core of a photonic crystal fiber, the effective mode area can be further enhanced even in bent conditions.

Tunable Photonic Crystal Fiber Couplers With a Thermo-Responsive Liquid Crystal Resonator

We investigate the bending characteristics of leakage channel fibers (LCFs) to achieve large mode area (LMA) and effectively single-mode operation with a practically allowable bending radius for compact Yb-doped fiber applications. Through numerical simulations, carried by the full-vectorial finite-element method, we present the limitations on the effective area of LCFs under bent condition and compare their limits with that of conventional step-index LMA fibers. Due to a better controllability of the low numerical aperture and a large value of the differential bending loss (~20 dB/m) between the fundamental and higher order modes in LCFs, the LMA of ~500 μm2 (core diameter of ~36 μm) at 1064 nm can be achieved when the optimized LCF is bent into a 10 cm bending radius.

Capillary optical fibers: design and applications for attaining a large effective mode area

Numerical design strategies are presented to achieve efficient broad or narrow band-pass filters based on index-guiding, solid-core, and single-mode photonic crystal fibers (PCFs). The filtering characteristics have been verified through BPM solver. By scaling the pitch constant, the bandpass window can be shifted accordingly. The fiber design constitutes a fluorine-doped central core, enlarged air-holes surrounding the down-doped core, and small air-holes in the cladding. The proposed bandpass filter is based on controlling the leakage losses, so one can tune filter characteristics simply by changing its length. From numerical simulations we show that for large values of air-hole diameter in the first ring, the bandpass window is narrow, while for low doping concentration and small sized air-holes in the first ring, bandpass window is very broad. We also simulate how the hole-size and number of rings in the PCF cladding affects the device characteristics. We find that a 5-cm long PCF with down-doped core and eleven rings of air-holes can result in approximately 440 nm 3-dB bandwidth with more than 90% of transmission. The longer device has reduced transmission and smaller 3-dB bandwidth. Tolerance analysis has also been performed to check the impact of fiber tolerances on the performance of the PCF bandpass filter. It has been observed that the decrement in cladding hole-diameter by 1% reduces the transmission to 21% from its peak value of 93%, however +/-1% tolerance in the inner hole-diameter degrades the transmission to 75% from its peak.

Limitation on Effective Area of Bent Large-Mode-Area Leakage Channel Fibers

In this paper we study the impact of elliptically-deformed features such as cladding air-holes and elliptically-modulated cores, as ingredients for optimizing the coupling characteristics of dual-core fluorine-doped photonic crystal fiber (PCF) couplers. We provide a detailed numerical investigation by using a trial and error approach for optimizing the propagation characteristics of fluorine-doped PCF couplers. Typical characteristics of the newly proposed PCF coupler structure are: wavelength-flattened coupling characteristics between 0.7 mum and 1.6 mum wavelength range, coupling efficiency of 50+/-1 % from 0.9 mum to 1.6 mum, and a reasonably small coupling length of 1.3 cm. In addition we have elaborately derived the design parameters so that our proposed dual-core PCF coupler exhibits polarization-insensitive characteristics verified by using a full-vectorial beam propagation method. The proposed dual-core PCF can be effectively used as a 3-dB coupler, over a wide wavelength range.