Dispersion tailoring in optical fibres

摘要

An optical fibre is provided with dispersion tuning holes (510) arranged in the wings of the modal field distribution (512). These dispersion tuning holes can be used in a holey or conventional fibre geometry to tune the fibre dispersion independently from the other modal properties, such as the mode shape, to generate birefringence and for other dispersion tuning applications. These holes contrast from the usual "holey fibre" holes in that they are generally carefully placed laterally offset from the geometrical axis of the optical fibre by a distance of the same order as the mode field radius. The placement and size of the proposed "dispersion tuning holes" ensures that they affect the dispersion of the mode in a desired manner.