ARTICLE COMPRISING A MULTIMODE OPTICAL FIBER COUPLER

摘要

The present invention is an optical coupler comprising a plurality of optic al fibers that have unclad (core-exposed) ends and tapered cladding regions extending to cladded ends. The core-exposed ends are arranged in a bundle, and the cladded ends can be arranged as needed. The optical coupler can efficiently couple between waveguides of different core areas and shapes. Fo r example, it may be used to connect a multimode collection fiber having a cor e area of greater than 50 .mu.m to a planar waveguide amplifier having wavegui de strips with heights of 5 .mu.m or less.