Analysis of Photonic Crystal Fibers.pdfVIP

Analysis of Photonic Crystal Fibers PCF in OptiFDTD Introduction In the past 10 years, photonic crystal fibers PCF have attracted much scientific and commercial interest. The research and design work for PCF starts from accurate modal analysis of the fiber. Once the modes are found, all of the PCF properties such as loss, dispersion, and cutoff can be determined. There are general three types of PCF: holey fiber HF , field-confined holy fiber FCHF and Hole-Assisted Light-guide Fiber HALF , as shown in figure 1. In OptiFDTD, the mode solver is combined with the FDTD engine so that FDTD simulation can use the modal field as input directly. In addition to this integrated mode solver, OptiFDTD also provides an independent mode solver to allow user to solve and study the mode outside of an FDTD calculation. The PCF mode solvier will mainly be used as an independent mode solver. Modal analysis requires two main steps: 1 Create the layout 2 Calculate the modes We will use waveguide layout designer to define the PCF layout, and then convert the layout to a refractive index distribution file. The mode solver will load in the index distribution file and perform the mode analysis. Some users may want to scan the wavelength to find out the cutoff wavelength, or want to scan the layout parameters. All of this is possible with OptiFDTD The following section will demonstrate how a photonic crystal fiber can be analyzed in OptiFDTD. Sample 1---Photonic Crystal Fiber---Holey Fiber The most common PCF is Holey Fiber as shown in figure 1 a , the cladding region consists of a hexagonal array of air-holes; One missing air-hole defines the core region. The real layout may have more layers of air holes, but it is sufficient to model only three layers since the mode is well confined [2] . To be safe, here we take five layers for the mode solving. We use