Know All About Fiber Collimator
It
is often required to transform light output from an optical fiber into a
free-space collimated beam. Although to carry out this task, a simple
collimation lens is sufficient, but it is necessary to fix the fiber end firmly
at one end at the fixed distance from the lens. To fix the fiber at one end, fiber
collimator is used. It is placed at the distance approximately equal to the
focal length of the lens.
Fiber Collimator is a passive
device that combines the fiber and lens for collimating the light that is
coming from the fiber, or for launching collimated light into the fiber.
Features of Fiber Collimator
·
Fiber Collimator is made from a curved
mirror or Collimating lens Thorlabs.
·
The light source in fiber collimator is
placed at its focus that makes divergent light into a parallel beam or couple
the parallel beam into the fiber.
·
It is available at a different
wavelength ranging from 850 nm to 1500 nm.
· It can either get attached to the bare
fiber directly or uses a mechanical interface to connect to a fiber e.g. FC or
SMA type.
For What Fiber Collimator is used
for?
A
collimating lens Thorlabs in fiber
is used to narrows a beam of particle or waves. It either aligned a direction
of light in a specific direction or causes a spatial cross section of the beam
to become smaller. Generally, a fiber collimator is required to naturally
transform diverging light from an optical fiber to a parallel beam of light.
Types of Lens Used in Fiber
Collimator
Fiber
Collimator can be constructed using any type of lens like fiber lenses, ball
lenses, spherical lenses, spherical singlets and doublets, GRIN (Graded Index)
lenses, microscope objectives, cylindrical lenses. In case of thermally
expanded core (TEC) fiber, no lens is used. The material of the lens can vary
from a glass to a plastic to silicon.
The
most common lens used in the construction of fiber collimator is GRIN as it is easy
to handle, small, relatively low cost, and competitive in optical performance.
Types of Fiber Collimator
On
the basis of the light source, fiber collimator is classified into four types:
·
Pinhole
Collimator: It consists of the thick conical
collimator with a hole in the bottom.
·
Parallel
hole Collimator: It consists of an array of parallel
holes, perpendicular to the crystal surface.
·
Convergent
Collimator: It consists of a group of tapered
holes that focus at a point
·
Divergent
Collimator: It is an inverted converging
collimator.
Conclusion
Fiber
collimator is an effective passive optical component that is used for
collimating of a laser beam. It is very essential to select the right type of
fiber collimator for the right performance of a network. You can pick the one from
the wide range of available collimating
lens Thorlabs from Kewlab products.
Comments
Post a Comment