Title of research: Investigation on the chalcogenide negative curvature fibers

Abstract

The project I am engaged in is the design of chalcogenide negative curvature fibers. Negative curvature fibers have drawn a lot of attention for mid-infrared (IR) transmission. An antiresonant reflecting structure is used to confine the light in the negative curvature fiber. Prior research studied the effects of tube number, tube glass thickness, boundary curvature, and gap distances between tubes. In the paper to be presented at the 2015 IEEE Topicals Meeting, we use numerical simulation to find the parameters that yield low leakage loss for the chalcogenide negative curvature fiber. We report that the optimal glass wall thickness calculated from the numerical simulations is slightly larger than the glass wall thickness corresponding to the antiresonance condition from analytical predictions. Increasing the glass wall thickness by 0.05 mum yields accurate empirical design outcomes in the chalcogenide negative curvature fibers with the parameter ranges we consider in this paper. Our research will help other researchers to quickly identify the optical glass tube wall thickness when fibers are drawn.