Dispersion engineering in soft glass photonic crystal fibers infiltrated with liquids Tomasz Stefaniuk a , Hieu Le Van b,c , Jacek Pniewski a , Van Cao Long b , Aleksandr Ramaniuk a , Karol Grajewski d , Lanh Chu Van b,e , Mirosław Karpierz d , Marek Trippenbach a , and Ryszard Buczyński a,f a Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Pasteura 7, 02-093 Warsaw Poland; b Institute of Physics, University of Zielona Góra, Prof. Szafrana 4a, 65-516 Zielona Góra, Poland; c Hong Duc University, 565 – Quang Trung Street, Thanh Hoa City, Viet Nam; d Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00-662 Warszawa, Poland; e Vinh University, 182 - Le Duan Street, Vinh City, Nghe An Province, Viet Nam; f Glass Laboratory, Institute of Electronic Materials Technology, Wólczynska 133, 01-919, Warsaw, Poland * rbuczyns@igf.fuw.edu.pl ABSTRACT We present a numerical study of the dispersion characteristic modification in a nonlinear photonic crystal fibre (PCF) infiltrated with organic solvents. The PCF is made of PBG08 glass and was developed in the stack-and-draw process. The PBG08 glass has a high refractive index (n > 2.0), high nonlinear refractive index (n 2 = 4.3×10 −19 m 2 /W) and good rheological properties that allow for thermal processing of the glass without crystallization. In the numerical study 18 different solvents were used. The dispersion, mode area, and losses characteristics were calculated. The zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW) of the fibre can be shifted towards longer wavelengths by approx. 150 nm by using Nitrobenzene as infiltrating liquid and by a smaller value using other liquids. At the same time the mode area of the fundamental mode increases by approx. 5 to 15% depending on the wavelength considered. The confinement losses increase significantly for six analysed liquids by a few orders of magnitude up to 10 2 dB/m. Our approach allows to combine high nonlinearities of the soft glass with the possibility to tune zero dispersion wavelength to the desired value. Keywords: dispersion, photonic crystal fibres, soft glass, opto-fluidics 1. INTRODUCTION Interaction of the bound electrons in a dielectric medium with an electromagnetic wave propagating through it leads to the dispersion (also referred as chromatic dispersion) which manifests in the dependence of the refractive index of the medium on the frequency of the propagating wave. When the medium is an optical fibre chromatic dispersion plays an important role in propagation of short pulses used in fibre communications even when the nonlinear effects are not taken into account because dispersion-induced pulse broadening can influence negatively the communication speed. The maximum transmission distance which can be achieved in modern optical communication is limited not only by the material properties (absorption and scattering) but also by the dispersion. Fortunately, the dielectric medium usually responds nonlinearly when stimulated by the wave and the trade-off between the dispersion and the nonlinear behaviour of the fibre can create localized structures (solitons) in space and/or time. These phenomena play an essential role in optical communication technology [1,2]. Therefore the dispersion engineering has been the subject of particular interest for a long time in optical fibres technology. Recently PCFs attract a lot of attention due to several advantages over conventional optical fibers. PCF is a fibre with two-dimensional cross-section structure in form of a photonic crystal. The structure usually consists of a central defect region surrounded by multiple air-holes. Since the PCFs discovery [3–5] a huge number of papers were published which changed many branches of optics. PCFs are now widely applied in fiber-optics, fiber lasers, light amplifiers, high-power transmission, highly sensitive gas sensors [6], nonlinear devices and other areas. One of the methods to engineer the dispersion properties of the PCFs is infiltrating the holes with some liquids [7–9]. By choosing the size of the holes and type of liquids one can shift ZDW to the desired wavelength for example to achieve Invited Paper Optical Fibers and Their Applications 2015, edited by Ryszard S. Romaniuk, Waldemar Wojcik, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9816, 98160N · © 2015 SPIE CCC code: 0277-786X/15/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.2229482 Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9816 98160N-1 Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 12/29/2015 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx