Limit of Effective Area for Single-Mode Operation in Step-Index Large Mode Area Laser Fibers

Step-index (SI) fiber designs are commonly used in achieving large mode area (LMA) and single-mode (SM) operation in fiber lasers. These fibers can either be intrinsically single-moded fibers or few-moded fibers, which can be forced into SM operation through bending. In this paper we evaluate the limitation of the effective area for SM operation by taking into account the effects of practical constraints such as fiber bending loss, laser performance, and fiber mechanical reliability on these LMA fiber designs. It is shown that the effective area of these fibers cannot be arbitrarily scaled up with the size of the fiber core. We also use the modeling result to provide estimated upper limits to the core diameters and corresponding effective areas for conventional SI fiber designs taking into account fiber parameters that are achievable nowadays.