Design and Characterization of a Low Loss Polarization Maintaining Photonic Crystal Fiber for THz Regime

In this article a hexagonal core structured photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is demonstrated for Terahertz (THz) wave propagation where the cladding is suspended by a number of rectangles. The geometrical design and wave guiding properties characterization are done by Finite Element Method (FEM) based comsol multiphysics software v.5.3a. The numerical outcomes of this proposed geometry exhibits an impressive performance in effective material loss (EML) reduction with a value of 0.01557cm
⁻¹
in x-polarization mode and 0.023858 cm
⁻¹
in y-polarization mode at 1THz operating frequency. Additionally, a significant difference is noticed in effective refractive index between x and y polarization mode which indicates that, this presented PCF structure carries polarization maintaining fiber (PMF) characteristics. This designed PCF also shows a flattened dispersion of ± 0.03 ps/THz/cm and high core power fraction of 47%. The existing extrusion fabrication process is very much suitable for hexagonal core structured PCF fabrication.