Crossing and Anticrossing in Bent All-Glass Leakage Channel Microstructured Optical Fibers: The Effect of Polymer Coating

This paper presents the results of a detailed theoretical study of the bending properties of all-glass leakage channel microstructured optical fibers (LC MOFs) with a polymer coating over a bending radius range from 4.8 cm to 10 cm. The dependencies of the effective refractive indices of the LC MOF modes on the bending radius have a number of crossings and anticrossings for different mode pairs. A detailed analysis showed that eight modes for each polarization have to be considered to correctly calculate the bending losses. These modes can be classified into relatively strong modes (three for each polarization) and relatively weak modes. The three strong modes have the most direct effect on the loss calculation. However, the relatively weaker modes also play a role through their coupling with the stronger modes, resulting in the appearance of local loss maxima in the loss dependencies for the strong modes. At a bending radius of 10 cm, the final leakage loss of the LC MOFs with a polymer coating is approximately four times lower than that of the LC MOFs without a coating. The significant reduction in losses paves the way for further optimization of the LC MOF geometric structure, leading to a reduction in the allowable bending radius.