Design of highly nonlinear photonic crystal fibers with flattened chromatic dispersion

A novel (to our knowledge) type of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with high nonlinearity and flattened dispersion is proposed. The propagation characteristics of chromatic dispersion, effective area, and nonlinearity are studied numerically by using the full-vector finite element method. Several PCF designs with high nonlinearity and nearly zero flattened dispersion or broadband flattened, and even ultraflattened, dispersion over different wavelength bands are obtained by optimizing the structural parameters. One optimized PCF has a nearly zero ultraflattened dispersion of 2.3 ps/(nm . km) with a dispersion variation of 0.2 ps/(nm . km) over the C + L + U wavelength bands. In addition, the dispersion slope and nonlinear coefficient at 1.55 mu m can be up to 2.2 x 10(-3) ps/nm(2) . km and 33.2 W-1 . km(-1), respectively. The designs proposed in this paper have bright prospects for applications in all-optical format conversion, supercontinuum generation, optical wavelength conversion, and many other fields. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America