Tolerancing the alignment of large-core Optical fibers, fiber bundles and light guides using a Fourier approach
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Publication Date
2017-04-20Journal Title
Applied Optics
ISSN
1559-128X
Publisher
OSA Publishing
Volume
56
Issue
12
Pages
3303-3310
Language
English
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
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Sawyer, T., Petersburg, R., & Bohndiek, S. (2017). Tolerancing the alignment of large-core Optical fibers, fiber bundles and light guides using a Fourier approach. Applied Optics, 56 (12), 3303-3310. https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.56.003303
Abstract
Optical fiber technology is found in a wide variety of applications to flexibly relay light between two points, enabling information transfer across long distances and allowing access to hard-to-reach areas. Large-core optical fibers and light guides find frequent use in illumination and spectroscopic applications, for example, endoscopy and high-resolution astronomical spectroscopy. Proper alignment is critical for maximizing throughput in optical fiber coupling systems; however, there currently are no formal approaches to tolerancing the alignment of a lightguide coupling system. Here, we propose a Fourier alignment sensitivity (FAS) algorithm to determine the optimal tolerances on the alignment of a light guide by computing the alignment sensitivity. The algorithm shows excellent agreement with both simulated and experimentally measured values and improves on the computation time of equivalent ray-tracing simulations by two orders of magnitude. We then apply FAS to tolerance and fabricate a coupling system, which is shown to meet specifications, thus validating FAS as a tolerancing technique. These results indicate that FAS is a flexible and rapid means to quantify the alignment sensitivity of a light guide, widely informing the design and tolerancing of coupling systems.
Sponsorship
Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States; Cancer Research UK (C14303/A17197, C47594/A16267, C47594/A21102); Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG-630729); Fund for Astrophysical Research (F.A.R.); National Science Foundation (NSF) (DGE-1143953).
Funder references
European Commission (630729)
Cancer Research UK (21102)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.56.003303
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/264655
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