Loss characteristics of helical-core fiber

A special optical fiber is investigated, which has a helical core in the cylindrical cladding. The beam propagation method (BPM) is used for analyzing the impacts of the geometric and physical parameters on the properties of mode losses of the helical-core fiber. The propagation loss is 0.32 dB/m for the fundamental mode and the propagation loss is 20.95 dB/m for the LP₁₁ mode in the wavelength range of 1050–1065 nm when the core diameter is 19 μm, the pitch of the core’s helix is 2.66 μmm, and the offset of the helix core from the center of the fiber axis is 31 μm. The core diameter of the single-mode helical-core fiber well exceeds that of the conventional large-mode-area fiber. The helical-core fiber can provide the effective large-mode-area single-mode operation without coiling fiber or selecting excitation mode.