Fiber Optic Glossary Search Results

Highly reflective and yet extremely low in secondary reflection, these devices are critical for interferometric applications. Fiber collimators are fundamental sub-components and building blocks for optical communications and broadband networks, and are widely used to covert a divergent output laser beam from a fiber or waveguide into an expanding beam of parallel light. With collimators, fiber optical components for signal transmission, switching and management can be furnished.
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If all involved fibers are single-mode (i.e., support only a single mode per polarization direction for a given wavelength), there are certain physical restrictions on the performance of the coupler. In particular, it is not possible to combine two or more inputs of the same optical frequency into one single-polarization output without significant excess losses.

However, such a restriction does not occur for different input wavelengths: there are couplers which can combine two inputs at different wavelengths into one output without exhibiting significant losses. Such couplers are used e.g. in fiber amplifiers to combine the signal input and the pump wave. Other wavelength-sensitive couplers are used as multiplexers in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) telecom systems to combine several input channels with different wavelengths, or to separate channels.
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The laser radiation is automatically generated at one or several frequencies corresponding to resonances (resonator modes), possibly with small deviations caused by "gain pulling". No special measures are required to obtain resonance; this is different for external resonators, e.g. resonant enhancement cavities.
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