A six-strut suspended core fiber for cylindrical vector mode generation and propagation

We report fabrication and simulation of an F2 glass six-strut suspended core fiber (SCF) with small effective core diameter of 2.5 μm for cylindrical vector (CV) modes generation and propagation. Simulation results show that the fiber has a large effective refractive index difference in the order of 10^-4-10^-3 between the first higher-order CV modes, including TE₀₁, HE₂₁even and odd and TM₀₁ modes. TE₀₁ and TM₀₁ were experimentally generated and were evaluated as having high purity of 82 percent and 85 percent, respectively. The results demonstrate that the SCF is a competitive waveguide candidate for selectable CV mode generation and propagation.