A photonic lantern is studied which is formed by seven multimode fibers inserted into a pure silica capillary tube. The core of the tapered end has a uniform refractive index because the polymer claddings are removed before the fibers are inserted. Consequently,the light distribution is also uniform. Two theories describing a slowly varying waveguide and multimode coupling are used to analyze the photonic lantern. The transmission loss decreases as the length of the tapered part increases. For a device with a taper length of 3.4 cm,the loss is about 1.06 dB on average for light propagating through the taper from an inserted fiber to the tapered end and 0.99 dB in the reverse direction. For a device with a taper length of 0.7 cm,the two loss values are 2.63 dB and 2.53 dB,respectively. The results show that it is possible to achieve a uniform light distribution with the tapered end and a low-loss transmission in the device if parameters related to the lantern are reasonably defined.
Hai-Jiao YuQi YanZong-Jun HuangHe TianYu JiangYong-Jun LiuJian-Zhong ZhangWei-Min Sun
