Polymer negative curvature ring-core fiber for OAM modes guidance

Area of Science:

• Photonics and Optical Communications
• Materials Science

Background:

• Optical fibers are crucial for data transmission.
• Orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes offer potential for increased data capacity.
• Developing novel fiber structures is key to harnessing OAM modes effectively.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and investigate a novel polymer-based negative curvature ring-core fiber (NC-RCF).
• To evaluate the transmission capabilities of OAM modes within the designed fiber.
• To assess key performance metrics for optical communication applications.

Main Methods:

• Design and simulation of a hollow-core NC-RCF using TOPAS as the background material.
• Analysis of OAM mode propagation in the annular core region.
• Characterization of effective refractive index differences, confinement loss, dispersion, and mode area.

Main Results:

• The designed NC-RCF stably transmits 82 OAM modes in the 1.0-1.5 THz frequency range.
• Effective refractive index differences between HE and EH modes exceed 10⁻⁴.
• Confinement losses are below 10⁻⁸ dB/m, dispersion variations are less than 0.31 ps/THz/cm, and effective mode areas are larger than 5.14 mm².
• Achieved a maximum mode purity of 99.78% for all vector modes.

Conclusions:

• The proposed polymer-based NC-RCF demonstrates excellent performance for OAM mode transmission.
• Low loss, low dispersion, and high mode purity make it suitable for future optical communication systems.
• This novel fiber design contributes significantly to the advancement of high-capacity optical networks.