Waveguidance by the photonic bandgap effect in optical fibres

Photonic crystals form a new class of intriguing building blocks to be utilized in future optoelectronics and electromagnetics. One of the most exciting possiblilties offered by phtonic crystals is the realization of new types of electromagnetic waveguides. In the optical domain, the most mature technology for such photonic bandgap (PBG) waveguides is in optical fibre configurations.

These new fibres can be classified in a fundamentally different way to all optical waveguides and possess radically different guiding properties due to PBG guidance, as opposed to guidance by total internal refelction. In this paper we summarize and review our theoretical work demonstrating the underlying physical principles of PBG guiding optical fibres and discuss some of their unique waveguiding properties.