{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,14]],"date-time":"2026-03-14T18:21:58Z","timestamp":1773512518713,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":26,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"23","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,12,6]],"date-time":"2022-12-06T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1670284800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Key Basic Research Scheme of Shenzhen Natural Science Foundation","award":["JCYJ20200109142010888"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JCYJ20200109142010888"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Helical twist provides an additional degree of freedom for controlling light in optical waveguides, expanding their applications in sensing. In this paper, we propose a helical broken-circular-symmetry core microstructured optical fiber for refractive index sensing. The proposed fiber consists of pure silica and its noncircular helical core is formed by a broken air ring. By using finite element modeling combined with transformation optics, the modal characteristics of the fiber are investigated in detail. The results show that for the core located at the fiber center, the confinement loss of fundamental core modes increases with twist rate, whereas for a sufficiently large core offset the modes can be well confined owing to the twist-induced light guidance mechanism, showing decreases with rising twist rate in the loss spectra. Moreover, we have found that for large twist rates and core offsets, resonant peaks occur at different twist rates due to the couplings between the fundamental core modes and the highly leaky modes created by the helical structure. The refractive index sensing performance is also studied and the obtained results show that the proposed fiber has great potential in fiber sensing.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s22239523","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,12,6]],"date-time":"2022-12-06T02:55:39Z","timestamp":1670295339000},"page":"9523","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Refractive Index Sensing Using Helical Broken-Circular-Symmetry Core Microstructured Optical Fiber"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"22","author":[{"given":"Mingjie","family":"Cui","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, Photonics Research Institute, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7572-982X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Zhuo","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, Photonics Research Institute, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3185-0441","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Changyuan","family":"Yu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, Photonics Research Institute, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong"},{"name":"The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen 518057, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,12,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"50","DOI":"10.1049\/el:19870037","article-title":"Fabrication and characterisation of circularly birefringent helical fibres","volume":"23","author":"Birch","year":"1987","journal-title":"Electron. 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