Abstract

A bistable nonmechanical optical switch for multimode optical fiber is presented. It is a 2-input/2-output device for the 1-μm wavelength range. The optical characteristics are independent of the polarization state of incident light. The switch consists of Faraday rotators of thin plates of yttrium-iron-garnet single crystal, electromagnets whose cores are made of semihard magnetic material, halfwave plates of crystal quartz, polarizing prisms of rutile, and lenses. Switching is performed by one-shot 3-V 20-μsec pulses with a maximum current of 500 mA. The 1.5-dB insertion losses and −32-dB cross talk were obtained at a wavelength of 1.3 μm.

© 1982 Optical Society of America

Nonmechanical optical switch for single-mode fibers

Masataka Shirasaki, Hirochika Nakajima, Takeshi Obokata, and Kunihiko Asama
Appl. Opt. 21(23) 4229-4234 (1982)

Magnetooptical 2×2 switch for single-mode fibers

Masataka Shirasaki, Fumio Wada, Hisashi Takamatsu, Hirochika Nakajima, and Kunihiko Asama
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M. Shirasaki, H. Kuwahara, and T. Obokata
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Masataka Shirasaki and Kunihiko Asama
Appl. Opt. 21(23) 4296-4299 (1982)

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Richard A. Soref
Appl. Opt. 21(8) 1386-1393 (1982)