Endlessly single-mode heat-sink waveguide

Recently, a new form of optical fiber, the photonic crystal fiber, has been reported. This fiber has a hexagonal array of submicrometer air holes running along its length and a lattice site without a hole (a line defect) in its center. The defect acts as a core, confining light that travels along the fiber as a guided mode. This structure can be endlessly single mode, never supporting more than one confined mode no matter what the diameter of the core or the wavelength of the light. Having discovered this effect experimentally and provided a qualitative explanation for the observed behavior, we present here a planar version of this fiber. Periodic arrays of parallel planar fins are placed o…