Leakage loss and group velocity dispersion in air-core photonic bandgap fibers

The wavelength dependence and the structural dependence of leakage loss and group velocity dispersion (GVD) in air-core photonic bandgap fibers (PBGFs) are numerically investigated by using a full-vector finite element method. It is shown that at least seventeen rings of arrays of air holes are required in the cladding region to reduce the leakage losses to a level of 0.1 dB/km in 1.55-mum wavelength range even if using large air holes of the diameter to pitch ratio of 0.9 and that the leakage losses in air-core PBGFs decrease drastically with increasing the hole diameter to pitch ratio. Moreover, it is shown that the waveguide GVD and dispersion slope of air-core PBGFs are much larger than those of conventional silica fibers and that the shape of air-core region greatly affects the leakage losses and the dispersion properties. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.