Tunable Highly Birefringent Bandgap-Guiding Liquid-Crystal Microstructured Fibers

Abstract—A new type of nematic liquid-crystal infiltrated photonic bandgap-guiding fiber for single polarization or high-birefringence guidance is proposed. Numerical studies demon-strate that modal birefringence can be tuned by proper selection of the structural and material parameters as well as by the appli-cation of an external electric field in conjunction with the specific liquid-crystal anchoring conditions. Index Terms—Highly birefringent (HB) fibers, nematic liquid crystals (LCs), photonic crystal fibers, polarization-maintaining (PM) fibers. I