title: Low bend loss in tightly-bent fibers through adiabatic bend transitions.
abstract: We demonstrate low bend loss for tightly bent optical fibers by winding the fiber around a mandrel designed to follow an adiabatic transition path into the bend. Light in the fundamental core-guided mode is smoothly transferred to a single cladding mode of the bent fiber, and back to the core mode as it leaves the bent region again. Design of the transition is based on modeling of the propagation and coupling characteristics of the core and cladding modes, which clearly illustrate the physical processes involved.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Photonics and Photonic Materials and Department of Physics, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: T A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Birks
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Knight
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004735:Energy Transfer; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008027:Light; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D055100:Optical Fibers; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity