Fabrication and Characteristic of Polarization-Maintaining Photonic Crystal Fiber with Two Big Air Holes Structure

In this article, polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fibers with two big air holes, which are based on a kind of multi-component glass, are fabricated by the capillary-stacking and drawing method. The microstructure of the small air holes is found to be well kept through a scanning electron microscope, even with a diameter close to 0.6 mu m. Numerical results show that the chromatic dispersion of the proposed fiber with a 125-mu m-diameter approaches zero at 1,550 nm. Meanwhile, experimental results display that the beat length of the same photonic crystal fiber is 3.6961 mm at 1,550 nm, and the related polarization extinction ratio and polarization mode dispersionis 17.23889 dB and 2.58321 ps, respectively