We demonstrate that porous fibers have low effective material loss over an extended frequency range, 4.5 times larger bandwidth than that can be achieved in sub-wavelength solid core fibers. We also show that these new fibers can be designed to have near zero dispersion for 0.5-1 THz resulting to overall less terahertz signal degradation. In addition, it is demonstrated that the use of asymmetrical sub-wavelength air-holes within the core leads to high birefringence ~0.026. This opens up the potential for realization of novel polarization preserving fibers in the terahertz regime.
The recent development of the terahertz waveguide makes it an excellent platform for integrating many intriguing functionalities, which offers tremendous potential to build compact and robust terahertz systems. In the context of next-generation high-speed communication links at the terahertz band, engineering the dispersion and birefringence of terahertz waves is essential. Here, we experimentally demonstrate subwavelength birefringent waveguide gratings based on the low-loss cyclic olefin copolymer exploiting micro-machining fabrication techniques. Asymmetric cross-section and periodic-structural modulation along propagation direction are introduced to achieve birefringent THz grating for filtering and dispersion compensation. Because of strong index modulation in the subwavelength fiber, a high negative group velocity dispersion of -188 (-88) ps/mm/THz is achieved at 0.15 THz for x-polarization (y-polarization), i.e., 7.5 times increase compared to the state-of-the-art reported to date. Such high negative dispersion is realized in a 43 mm grating length, which is less than half of the length reported until now (e.g., 100 mm). Further, the subwavelength fiber grating filters two orthogonal polarization states and exhibits transmission dips with 8.5-dB and 7.5-dB extinction ratios for x and y polarization, respectively. Our experiment demonstrates the feasibility of using polymer-based terahertz gratings as a dispersion compensator in terahertz communications and steering polarized terahertz radiations for polarization-sensitive THz systems.
We design and fabricate ultra-low-loss tapered optical fibers (TOFs) with minimal lengths. We first optimize variations of the torch scan length using the flame-brush method for fabricating TOFs with taper angles that satisfy the adiabaticity criteria. We accordingly fabricate TOFs with optimal shapes and compare their transmission to TOFs with a constant taper angle and TOFs with an exponential shape. The highest transmission measured for TOFs with an optimal shape is in excess of 99.7 % with a total TOF length of only 23 mm, whereas TOFs with a constant taper angle of 2 mrad reach 99.6 % transmission for a 63 mm TOF length.
Previous studies of the modulation instability (MI) of continuous waves (CWs) in a two-core fiber (TCF) did not consider effects caused by co-propagation of the two polarized modes in a TCF that possesses birefringence, such as cross-phase modulation (XPM), polarization-mode dispersion (PMD), and polarization-dependent coupling (PDC) between the cores. This paper reports an analysis of these effects on the MI by considering a linear-birefringence TCF and a circular-birefringence TCF, which feature different XPM coefficients. The analysis focuses on the MI of the asymmetric CW states in the TCFs, which have no counterparts in single-core fibers. We find that, the asymmetric CW state exists when its total power exceeds a threshold (minimum) value, which is sensitive to the value of the XPM coefficient. We consider, in particular, a class of asymmetric CW states that admit analytical solutions. In the anomalous dispersion regime, without taking the PMD and PDC into account, the MI gain spectra of the birefringent TCF, if scaled by the threshold power, are almost identical to those of the zero-birefringence TCF. However, in the normal dispersion regime, the power-scaled MI gain spectra of the birefringent TCFs are distinctly different from their zero-birefringence counterparts, and the difference is particularly significant for the circular-birefringence TCF, which takes a larger XPM coefficient. On the other hand, the PMD and PDC only exert weak effects on the MI gain spectra. We also simulate the nonlinear evolution of the MI of the CW inputs in the TCFs and obtain a good agreement with the analytical solutions.
Ability to selectively enhance the amplitude and maintain high coherence of the supercontinuum signal with long pulses is gaining significance. In this work an extra degree of freedom afforded by varying the dispersion profile of a waveguide is utilized to selectively enhance supercontinuum. As much as 16 dB signal enhancement in the telecom window and 100 nm of wavelength extension is achieved with a cascaded waveguide, compared to a fixed dispersion waveguide. Waveguide tapering, in particular with increasing width, is determined to have a flatter and more coherent supercontinuum than a fixed dispersion waveguide when longer input pulses are used. Furthermore, due to the strong birefringence of an asymmetric silicon waveguide the supercontinuum signal is broadened by pumping simultaneously with both quasitransverse electric (TE) and quasi-transverse magnetic (TM) mode in the anomalous dispersion regime. Thus, by controlling the dispersion for the two modes selective signal generation is obtained. Such waveguides offer several advantages over optical fiber as the variation in dispersion can be controlled with greater flexibility in an integrated platform. This work paves the way forward for various applications in fields ranging from medicine to telecom where specific wavelength windows need to be targeted.
Materials with a zero refractive index support electromagnetic modes that exhibit stationary phase profiles. While such materials have been realized across the visible and near-infrared spectral range, radiative and dissipative optical losses have hindered their development. We reduce losses in zero-index, on-chip photonic crystals by introducing high-Q resonances via resonance-trapped and symmetry-protected states. Using these approaches, we experimentally obtain quality factors of 2.6*10^3 and 7.8*10^3 at near-infrared wavelengths, corresponding to an order-of-magnitude reduction in propagation loss over previous designs. Our work presents a viable approach to fabricate zero-index on-chip nanophotonic devices with low-loss.