High birefringent rhombic-hole photonic crystal fibers

High birefringence induced by rhombic air-hole photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) is numerically analyzed by using the finite-element method. The birefringence of a few kinds of PCFs was investigated with different parameters related to rhombic holes, including the rhombic-hole shape, size, and spacing. It was found that the birefringence of the proposed rhombic-hole PCF in this study is relatively larger than that of an elliptical-hole PCF with the same air-filling fraction (f = 0.0375) when the ratio of the rhombic-hole diagonal length is equal to the elliptical-hole ellipticity. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America