Review of porous core photonic crystal fibers for terahertz waveguiding

The terahertz regime lies between microwave and infrared ranges, taking up a substantial portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Due to its unique features, terahertz radiation has received significant attention from researchers. This paper reviews the current status of Porous Core Photonic Crystal Fibers (PC-PCF) for terahertz propagation. While the review partly focuses on general introduction as well as the methods of generating and detecting terahertz radiation, an overview of the applicability of terahertz radiation in medical and telecommunication industries is provided. The paper also reviews the fundamental guiding principles and properties of PC-PCFs. The discussed optical features of PC-PCFs include effective material loss, confinement loss, bending loss, core power fraction, dispersion variation, and birefringence. A research timeline which systematically analyses proposed PC-PCFs from 2014 to 2020 is also presented. Finally, the paper discusses the most common fabrication methods of PC-PCFs.