Ultra-flattened-dispersion selectively liquid-filled photonic crystal fibers

We propose a method to control the chromatic dispersion properties of photonic crystal fibers using the selective hole filling technique. The method is based on a single hole-size fiber geometry, and uses an appropriate index- matching liquid to modify the effective size of the filled holes. The dependence of dispersion properties of the fiber on the design parameters such as the refractive index of the liquid, lattice constant and hole diameter are studied numerically. It is shown that very small dispersion values between 0 +/- 0.5ps/nm-km can be achieved over a bandwidth of 430-510nm in the communication wavelength region of 1300-1900nm. Three such designs are proposed with air hole diameters in the range 1.5- 2.0 mu m. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.