Double-cladding photonic crystal fibers with reduced cladding symmetry for Tm-doped lasers

Innovative Photonic Crystal Fibers (PCF) with optimized air-hole matrix, designed to break the C6v symmetry of the inner cladding while preserving their feasibility through the well-established stack-and-draw technique, are presented. The possibility to provide stable SM guiding at λ = 2 μm with core diameter up to 80 μm and a coupled pump power exceeding 300 W is analyzed by means of a full-vector modal solver based on the finiteelement method with embedded thermal model, to account for the effects of heating on the mode confinement. Simulation results have shown this approach is effective in providing modal discrimination, allowing selective amplification of the sole fundamental mode due to the delocalization of the high-order modes with mirrorsymmetric field distributions. Effective suppression of the high-order modes under a heat load of 340 W/m, while keeping an effective area exceeding 2500 μm2 has been demonstrated. © 2014 Copyright SPIE.