Hole-assisted lightguide fiber for dispersion tailoring

The exploitations of air holes in optical fiber design have been receiving growing research interest since the first photonic crystal fiber (PCF) was demonstrated. Many peculiar optical properties are achievable with the flexible control of the geometry of the air holes in the microstructured cladding. Different from the complex geometry of microstructured cladding in the holey PCF, hole-assisted lightguide fiber (HALF) is based on conventional optical fiber design and therefore guides light by total internal reflection. The existence of the assisting air holes in the cladding helps to tailor the optical properties of the fiber. In this work, the dispersion tailoring is demonstrated by varying the structural parameters and material properties of the fiber. Additional tunability is achieved by infiltrating substance with tunable refractive index into the assisting holes.