Dependence of birefringence on elliptical-hole orientation in photonic crystal fibers

In this paper, the dependence of birefringence on the orientation of elliptical holes in triangular-lattice elliptical-hole photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) is investigated numerically. A resonant enhancement of birefringence between the anisotropic lattice arrangement and oriented elliptical holes is observed, and the birefringence varies periodically with the ellipticalhole orientation. When the major axes of adjacent elliptical holes are parallel, the birefringence approaches the maximum. Based on the numeric analysis, a novel highly birefringent PCF is proposed, and the maximum modal birefringence of 0.086 is achieved.