Optical coupling apparatus for introducing and coupling an incident light into a wave guide
AssigneeMatsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
InventorsSeiji Nishiwaki, Shinji Uchida, Junichi Asada
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A photocoupler has a polarization converting device for converting laser light emitted from a laser source to a polarized beam of light having electric vectors oriented in a direction of a tangent of a circle having its center on an optical axis of the photocoupler and the phase of which beam is shifted by .pi. at the boundary of a declination line passing the center of the circle. The wave front of the converted laser light is spherical. And, a photocoupler for exciting a waveguided light which propagates radially from the center thereof is positioned so that the input coupling efficiency becomes maximum.
Claims14
An optical coupling apparatus comprising:
- a laser source which emits a divergent beam of laser light in a direction along an optical axis of the apparatus;
- a wave guide lying in a plane perpendicular to the optical axis;
- a photocoupler provided on said wave guide and having a concentric periodic structure;
- optical means for introducing the laser light from said laser source to said photocoupler as a polarized beam of light having a spherical wavefront, said optical means including polarization converting means for converting the laser light emitted from said laser source to a polarized beam, the electric field vectors of which are equal at positions diagonally across from each other with respect to a circle centered at said optical axis;
- and
- said photocoupler being arranged at such a position relative to said laser source that the polarized beam incident on the waveguide is coupled to waveguided light with maximum efficiency.
An optical coupling apparatus comprising:
- a laser source which emits a divergent beam of laser light in a direction along an optical axis of the apparatus;
- a wave guide lying in a plane perpendicular to the optical axis;
- a photocoupler provided on said wave guide and having a concentric periodic structure;
- optical means for introducing the laser light from said laser source to said photocoupler as a polarized beam of light having a spherical wavefront, said optical means including polarization converting means for converting the laser light emitted from said laser source to a polarized beam, the electric field vectors of which are equal at positions diagonally across from each other
- with respect to a circle centered at said optical axis, and condenser lens means operatively optically interposed between said laser source and said photocoupler for making the light emitted by said laser source converge on said photocoupler;
- and
- said photocoupler being arranged at such a position relative to said laser source that the polarized beam incident on the waveguide is coupled to waveguided light with maximum efficiency.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.