Highly-Birefringent Solid-Core Bragg Fiber with a High-Index-Contrast Cladding

We propose a highly-birefringent solid-core Bragg fiber (SC-BF) with a high-index-contrast cladding by symmetrically introducing two air holes into the solid core. The birefringence properties of such a SC-BF and their influencing factors are numerically investigated by using the finite element method. The numerical results show that the modal birefringence can be effectively improved by optimizing the refractive index, size and position of the air holes. We numerically demonstrate a highly-birefringent SC-BF with the modal birefringence of 2.43×10^-4 at 1550 nm.