Effect of Temperature on the Dispersion Properties of Water-Filled Photonic Crystal Fibers

Abstract

This study aimed to dynamically control the optical dispersion properties of water-filled photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) by adjusting their temperature and the wavelength of the applied pulse (0.8–1.5) nm. Using numerical modeling (finite element method), the effect of hole diameter (1.5–4.5 μm) and temperature (15–95 °C) on the zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) was analyzed. The results showed that increasing the hole diameter reduced the ZDW from 1.1324 to 1.0216 μm (at 15 °C) and increased the maximum positive dispersion (from 38.67 to 53.24 ps/nm/km). Increasing the temperature also shifted the ZDW toward longer wavelengths of 36.5 nm with a tuning accuracy of ±5 nm. This behavior is due to the decrease in the refractive index of water with temperature, which alters the balance between material and wave dispersion. The importance of these results extends beyond the theoretical aspect, as they constitute a qualitative addition in two critical technical fields: first, in optical communications systems, where this dynamic control opens the way to designing fibers capable of handling multiple wavelengths with enhanced performance, and second, in the field of supercontinuum generation research and its advanced applications, where these smart, thermally tunable fibers could contribute to the development of highly efficient nonlinear optical devices, such as amplifiers and ultrafast light sources, placing them at the heart of promising future technological applications.

Received: 16 October 2025 | Revised: 23 January 2026 | Accepted: 27 March 2026

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Author Contribution Statement

Mohammed Salim Jasim AL-Taie: Conceptualization, Software, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Supervision. Hayder Ahmed Hasan: Methodology, Validation, Resources, Project administration. Mohammed Kadhum Hamad: Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing, Visualization.