Optical collimator array and method of aligning light axes thereof.

摘要

An optical collimator array having an optical fiber array (5) for aligning and fixing optical fibers, and a microlens array (11) formed by arranging lenses integrally and connected to the optical fiber array with a predetermined distance, has a spacer (21) for fixing said microlens array connected to said optical fiber array in such a manner that light axes at an end of said optical fibers in said optical fiber array are made coincident with those of said lenses in said microlens array. The light axes alignment mentioned above is performed by arranging reference optical fibers (5a) at both sides of and on the same plane of the optical fibers of the optical fiber array; emanating a light beam upon the optical fibers and the reference optical fibers; picking up light beams emitted from the microlens through the optical fibers of the optical fiber array, and light beams emitted directly from the reference optical fibers; displaying the picked up light beams as light spots on a monitor; and adjusting a positional relation between the optical fiber array and the microlens array in such a manner that light spots of the microlens array are existent on a reference line generated between light spots of the reference optical fibers. <IMAGE>