Unlike conventional optical fibers in cylindrical form, a tapered optical fiber is a fiber with its core diameter linearly varied lengthwise. As a new type optical fiber, it can provide a higher coupling efficiency, converge the energy of output light and improve the stability and flexibility of the system, thus widely usable in the fields of high power laser transmission, dynamic position sensing, fluorescent detection, data storage and image sensing, etc. and having many potential applications. This paper summarizes the properties of tapered optical fibers and their actual uses in some fields.

Date Published: 11 October 2001
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 4604, Fiber Optic Components, Subsystems, and Systems for Telecommunications, (11 October 2001); doi: 10.1117/12.444612

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4604:
Fiber Optic Components, Subsystems, and Systems for Telecommunications
Suning Tang; Xiaomin Ren, Editor(s)