Investigation into the Propagation Characteristics of Photonic Crystal Fiber

Abstract

Photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is a new class of optical fiber based on the properties of photonic crystals. It has the ability to confine light in hollow cores. In this paper, the propagation characteristics of PCF described, using different materials, was investigated such as effective area, effective refractive index , numerical aperture and material dispersion for three different materials . It is concluded that zero dispersion occurs at less wavelength when there is no silica in the constriction of PCF (i.e. 0.83µm for sapphire (extra ordinary wave). Also, the three dimension relation between dispersion ,bit error rate ,and fiber length for the three different materials was presented.