Design of ultrahigh birefringent stress-induced polarization-maintaining fiber with hole-assistance

•A novel holes-assisted stress-induced polarization-maintaining fiber is designed combining stress and geometric birefringence, which can maintain excellent optical properties in both the Panda-type and Bow-Tie stress-applying parts.•With optimization of air-hole dimensions and positions, the proposed fiber demonstrates a three-fold increase in the birefringence compared to the traditional Panda-type polarization-maintaining fiber, meanwhile, the effective mode area and nonlinearity are ideal for sensing applications.•The designed fiber indicates excellent reflection and polarization dependent loss characteristics after the inscription of a Bragg grating.•The geometric dimensions of air-holes are deviation-tolerant as each air-hole parameters vary by up to 10% around the designated values.•The feasibility of the proposed fiber is verified, with a description of the actual fabrication process.