Single-polarization in-phase supermode operation in multicore fiber lasers

Abstract Two passive cores with elliptical air holes are introduced in the cladding of the active multicore fiber. The birefringence induced by the elliptical air holes lifts the degeneracy between two orthogonal in-phase supermodes, through the coupling between the passive and the active cores. For the proposed multicore fiber with an appropriate choice of the design parameters, the x-polarized in-phase supermode has more mode power in the active cores compared with the other supermodes. That in turn favors competition compared to the other supermodes with the low power density in the active cores. The numerical results show that the multicore fiber lasers can output a pure x-polarized in-phase supermode without using other mode-selective elements.