Bend Insensitive Design of Large-Mode-Area Microstructured Optical Fibers

Numerical investigation on the design of a novel kind of large-mode-area optical fiber is presented. Low bending loss propagation in the fiber is achieved by the introduction of low-index rods with small period and large normalized diameter in one segment of the cladding. Single-mode operation is realized by the introduction of low-index rods with large period and small normalized diameter in another segment of the cladding. When a conventional large-mode-area optical fiber is bent, it will generally experience large bend distortion and the mode area will reduce accordingly. To avoid that, a bend-resistant design by introducing a microstructure into the solid core of the proposed fiber is proposed. In particular, the mode area of one such fiber is always larger than 2000 μ m² when the bending radius is larger than 30 cm at the wavelength of 1.064 μm.