Highly birefringent photonic crystal fiber polarization splitter made of soft glass

A soft glass dual core polarization splitter based on highly birefringent photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed and the full vector finite element method (FEM) is employed to analyze the impacts of structural parameters on birefringence and the coupling length, and simulation results show that high birefringence on the order of 10(-2) can be obtained at 1.55 mu m, moreover, hole size, hole pitch and elliptic ratio all affect birefringence and the coupling length. Based on these results, the PCF's structure is optimized to realize a polarization splitter of 282 mu m whose largest extinction ratio is around -45.42 dB at 1.55 mu m. Meanwhile, the bandwidth at the extinction ratio of -10 dB is about 90 nm, and around 32 nm at -20 dB. (C) 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.