Supercontinuum Generation with High Birefringence SF6 Soft Glass Photonic Crystal Fibers

A kind of high birefringence SF6 soft glass photonic crystal fiber (HBSF6-PCF) is proposed. The properties of birefringence, dispersion, nonlinear coefficient and the transmission characteristics are studied by the multipole method and the adaptive split-step Fourier method. The numerical results show that the birefringence and the nonlinear coefficient reach the orders of 10-2 and 10-1, respectively. In addition, the HBSF6-PCFs can generate very smooth supercontinuum spectra when illuminated with femtosecond pulsed light of 1064 nm. It is found that up to 800 nm spectral width (evaluated at −5dB from the peak) is achieved. Therefore, the advantage of the HBSF6-PCFs is such that a high birefringence, a high nonlinearity and a smooth supercontinuum are perfectly combined in them.