Optical Fibers
Ideally suited for TOPTICA's tunable diode lasers
• Polarization Maintaining (PM) • High Power, AR, and fiber splitters/combiners • Wide wavelength coverage (350 nm .. 1625 nm)
• Ideal match for FiberDock & FiberOut • Individual fiber options for various applications
TOPTICA Photonics AG offers a wide range of optical fibers ideally suited for use with TOPTICAs lasers and FiberDock. These economically priced fibers cover a wide range of wavelengths. TOPTICA recommends to always purchase a fiber along with a laser and fiber coupler, as this ensures maximum fiber coupling efficiency. Also specialty fibers for power monitoring, beam splitting or combining are available with various ratios and also polarization maintaining.
Options
Isolation is often required for diode lasers to protect them from back reflections. For grating stabilized diode lasers like TOPTICAs scientific diode laser series, optical isolation is mandatory for reliable single frequency operation if the laser is fiber coupled. Depending on the laser, single stage or double stage isolators are recommended.
Specifications
TOPTICAs laser systems generally produce light that is diffraction limited or at least nearly so. It can therefore be coupled efficiently into single-mode fibers. Coupling single-mode light into a multi-mode (MM) fiber will result in a loss of brightness, although the coupling efficiency might be better and the coupling is less sensitive to misalignment – the output of the MM fiber will generally be multi-mode. To preserve the favorable properties of single-mode light, it should be coupled into single-mode (SM) fibers.
Coupling polarized light into a single-mode fiber will result in random polarization at the output of the fiber, because the fiber is generally slightly birefringent. As this birefringence changes with temperature and movement/bending of the fiber, also the output polarization of a SM fiber varies.
Polarization maintaining (PM) fibers can preserve the input polarization under certain circumstances. In PM fibers, a strong birefringence is introduced intentionally in a controlled way, and coupling linearly polarized light into a PM fiber along one of its principal axes will maintain the polarization. The polarization crosstalk from one axis to the other is generally smaller than -25 dB/100 m, for wavelengths below 480 nm smaller than -20 dB/100 m. The key of PM fibers is mostly aligned along the slow axis, and this is normally the axis along which the polarization is coupled into the fiber. TOPTICAs fiber coupler FiberDock offers a degree of freedom to rotate the fiber around its axis to optimize this alignment.
Normally, every fiber facet introduces 4% loss, reducing the theoretical maximum transmission through a fiber to 92%. Anti-reflection coated (AR) fibers reduce these reflection losses to below 1%, so that the power behind the fiber can be increased by 6-8%. The AR coating withstands high powers, but is not suited for physical contact (PC) fiber-to-fiber coupling. AR coated fibers are available at many wavelengths upon request.
High power (HP) fibers are recommended for powers greater than 1000 mW in the infrared, and 100 mW in the visible. The output beam from high power fibers shows very little distortion with M² << 1.1.
Type Wavelength Range Connectors Cutoff MFD NA Length Jacket Fiber PM Patchcords
PM
350 - 440 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 340 nm
2.3 .. > 2.6 µm
0.12
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000676
PM
350 - 440 nm
FC/APC-FC/PC
< 340 nm
2.3 .. > 2.6 µm
0.12
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000867
PM
405 - 480 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 400 nm
3.8 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000633
PM
480 - 630 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 470 nm
3.8 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000677
PM
480 - 630 nm
FC/APC-FC/PC
< 470 nm
3.8 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000868
PM
630 - 820 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 620 nm
4.5 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000678
PM
630 - 820 nm
FC/APC-FC/PC
< 620 nm
4.5 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000913
PM
810 - 980 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 800 nm
5.5 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000679
PM
980 - 1300 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 970 nm
6.6 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000661
PM
1290 - 1550 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 1280 nm
9.5 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000680
PM
1460 - 1625 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 1450 nm
10.5 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-000319
AR/HP Patchcords
PM/HP
375 - 488 nm
2 x FC/AFC + HP
< 370 nm
3.7 µm
0.07
2 m
3 mm PVC
#OE-000592
PM/HP
460 - 640 nm
2 x FC/AFC + HP
< 450 nm
4.0 µm
0.09
2 m
3 mm PVC
#OE-000874
PM/AR
760 - 855 nm
2 x FC/AFC + AR
< 760 nm
5.5 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OE-000660
PM/HP
760 - 980 nm
2 x FC/AFC + HP
< 760 nm
5.5 µm
0.11
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OE-000796
PM
940 - 1100 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 930 nm
6.6 µm
0.12
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OE-000799
PM/AR
1460 - 1620 nm
2 x FC/APC
< 1460 nm
10.5 µm
0.09
3 m
3 mm PVC
#OK-001293