Birefringent large-mode-area anti-resonant hollow core fiber in the 19 µm wavelength window

We report on the development and characterization of a birefringent large-mode-area anti-resonant silica fiber. The fiber structure is composed of six non-touching capillaries. The birefringence results from the breaking of the circular symmetry of an air core with increasing of the diameters of two capillaries located across the fiber diameter. We depart from earlier designs of polarizing hollow core fibers, in which coupling of the guided modes was intentionally facilitated with the cladding layout. Instead, with the help of numerical simulations, we enhance birefringence in our design by varying the capillary wall thickness between the larger- and smaller-diameter capillary sections of the cladding. The fiber has a large, elliptical core with semi-axes of ∼55 and 41 µm in diameter, an effective area of the fundamental mode of 1200µm2, and a total outer diameter of 127 µm. The cladding is composed of two pairs of smaller capillaries, which are 18 µm in diameter with 1.66 µm thick walls, and two larger capillaries with a 24 µm diameter and 1.14 µm thick walls, located across the diagonal of the fiber. Measured group birefringence over 1820–1920 nm wavelengths is monotonically increasing from 0.4×10−4 to 2.0×10−4, while its phase birefringence is from 5×10−6 to 1.1×10−5. Despite this, the fiber holds polarization with a 12 dB polarization extinction ratio at 1900 nm over a 1.5 m long sample.