The present invention relates to a novel group of cladding and core designs, especially for use in optical fibres, which provides enhanced dispersion compensating properties through waveguiding of higher-order modes. In a first aspect, the present invention relates to an optical fibre comprising: A central region (41) having a centre radius r centre, max and an effective refractive index ncentre.eff • A core region (43), having a core radius rcore-max,a maximum refractive index ncore,max, and an effective refractive index ncore,eff • A cladding region (45, 46) having a cladding radius rciadding,max, a maximum refractive index nclad,max, an effective refractive index nciad,effand/or a resultant geometrical index ng,clad In preferred embodiments, the core region and or the cladding region comprise a photonic crystal structure.
展开▼
