Design of Topas microstructured fiber with ultra-flattened chromatic dispersion and high birefringence

Abstract: A microstructured polymer optical fiber (mPOF) with both ultra-flattened near-zero chromatic dispersion and high birefringence based on Topas cyclic olefin copolymer is designed. Three rings of uniform elliptical air holes are arranged in triangular lattice in the cladding and an extra small defected hole is introduced in the fiber core. Guided modes, dispersion, birefringence and mode confinement properties of the designed mPOF are investigated by using the full-vector finite element method. Dispersion values between ±0.5ps/km/nm over the wavelength 1.1–1.7μm and high birefringence of the order of 10−3 are obtained for the optimized fiber structure. Low confinement losses and small effective mode area are obtained at the same time. The relatively simple architecture of the proposed Topas mPOF can be fabricated by our extrusion-stretching techniques. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]