Circular hole ENZ photonic crystal fibers exhibit high birefringence

—A novel photonic crystal fiber (PCF) design that yields very high birefringence is proposed and analyzed. Its significantly enhanced birefringence is achieved by filling selected air holes in the cladding with an epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) material. Extensive simulation results of this asymmetric material distribution in the lower THz range demonstrate that the reported PCF has a birefringence above 0.1 and a loss below 0.01 cm⁻¹ over a wide band of frequencies. Moreover, it exhibits near zero dispersion at 0.75 THz for both the X- and Y-polarization modes and a birefringence equal to 0.28. This THz PCF is then scaled successfully to optical frequencies. While the high birefringence is maintained, this optical PCF has a very high loss in its Y-polarization mode and, consequently, yields single-polarization single-mode (SPSM) propagation, exhibiting near zero dispersion at the optical telecom wavelength of 1.55 μm. The ideal ENZ materials used for these conceptual models are replaced with realistic ones for both the THz and optical PCF designs. With the currently available ENZ materials, the realistic PCFs still have a high birefringence, but with higher losses compared to the idealized results. Future developments of ENZ materials that achieve lower loss properties will mitigate this issue in any frequency band of high interest.