Spin-orbit coupling suppressed high-capacity dual-step-index ring-core OAM fiber

We design and fabricate a dual-step-index ring-core fiber (RCF) for orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode transmission. It has been proven that the proposed novel, to the best of our knowledge, dual-step-index ring-core structure can suppress the spin-orbit coupling and cut off the radial higher-order modes when the mode number becomes very large. In experiments, we demonstrate that the fabricated fiber can support OAM(8,1) with the interferometric method, where four higher-order mode groups are weakly-coupled. We also measure the loss of each mode according to the cut-back method and the loss can achieve <03 dB/km for the OAM modes with an order from vertical bar l vertical bar = 1 to vertical bar l vertical bar = 5. The exploration of this novel optical fiber structure may provide ideas and knowledge for the improvement of the optical fiber communication capacity. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group