Optical coupling characteristics of laser diodes to thermally diffused expanded core fiber coupling using an aspheric lens

A discussion is presented of the optical coupling characteristics of a 1.3 mu m laser diode to a thermally diffused expanded core (TEC) single-mode fiber coupling using an aspheric lens. The misalignment tolerance width for a 0.5 dB loss increment of the expanded core fiber was enlarged to 8.4 mu m from 1.9 mu m of a nonexpanded core fiber without a remarkable coupling-loss increase. The TEC fibers will make the LD module assembly easier, and reduce the assembly cost. >