Abstract
Photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) have recently attracted considerable attention because of their interesting and unconventional optical properties. Particularly, multi-core photonic crystal fibers (MCPCFs) have several potential advantages making them excellent candidates for applications such as, wavelength multiplexerdemultiplexer (MUX-DEMUX) devices, polarization splitters (PSs), dispersion-compensating fibers (DCFs), curvature sensors, vector bend sensors, Doppler difference velocimeters, phase-locked high-power lasers, optical frequency comb generators, and so on. In this paper MCPCF-structures and some potential applications are reviewed, and in addition design principles for constructing wavelength MUX-DEMUX, PS, DCF based on, two-core, three-core, and dual-concentric-core PCFs respectively, are introduced.
