Low-loss polarization-maintaining THz photonic crystal fiber with a triple-hole core

In this paper, we report a novel low-loss and polarization-maintaining terahertz (THz) photonic crystal fiber with a triple-hole unit inside the core. The properties of birefringence, effective material loss, confinement loss, bending loss, power fraction, dispersion, and single-mode condition are analyzed in detail by using the finite element methods. Simulation results show that high birefringence at a level of 10-2 can be achieved by simply reducing the diameter of one air hole of the triple-hole core. And low effective material loss down to 30% of its bulk material loss can be achieved in our interested band around 3 THz, due to the high core porosity of the designed triple-hole core. Moreover, this design dramatically facilitates the fabrication process, because of the typical hexagonal structure with all circular air holes and avoiding the troublesome multiple sub-wavelength air holes in the core area. The results reveal that this proposal has potential for efficient THz transmission and other functional applications. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America