Dispersion tailoring and compensation by modal interactions in OmniGuide fibers

We present a method for dispersion-tailoring of OmniGuide and other photonic band-gap guided fibers based on weak interactions ("anticrossings") between the core-guided mode and a mode localized in an intentionally introduced defect of the crystal. Because the core mode can be guided in air and the defect mode in a much higher-index material, we are able to obtain dispersion parameters in excess of 500,000 ps/nm-km. Furthermore, because the dispersion is controlled entirely by geometric parameters and not by material dispersion, it is easily tunable by structural choices and fiber-drawing speed. So, for example, we demonstrate how the large dispersion can be made to coincide with a dispersion slope that matches commercial silica fibers to better than 1%, promising efficient compensation. Other parameters are shown to yield dispersion-free transmission in a hollow OmniGuide fiber that also maintains low losses and negligible nonlinearities, with a nondegenerate TE01 mode immune to polarization-mode dispersion (PMD). We present theoretical calculations for a chalcogenide-based material system that has recently been experimentally drawn. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.