title: Supermodes for optical transmission.
abstract: In this paper, the concept of supermode is introduced for long-distance optical transmission systems. The supermodes exploit coupling between the cores of a multi-core fiber, in which the core-to-core distance is much shorter than that in conventional multi-core fiber. The use of supermodes leads to a larger mode effective area and higher mode density than the conventional multi-core fiber. Through simulations, we show that the proposed coupled multi-core fiber allows lower modal dependent loss, mode coupling and differential modal group delay than few-mode fibers. These properties suggest that the coupled multi-core fiber could be a good candidate for both spatial division multiplexing and single-mode operation.
authors.affiliation: CREOL: The College of Optics and Photonics, Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32826, USA. cxia@creol.ucf.edu
authors.forename: Cen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Neng
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.forename: Ibrahim
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ozdur
authors.forename: Xiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Guifang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Li