END-SURFACE CLOSELY ARRANGED MULTICORE OPTICAL FIBER, MANUFACTURING METHOD THEREFOR, AND MANUFACTURING APPARATUS THEREFOR

• Main Authors: TANAKA NORIO, TAKARADA SHIGERU
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 28.03.2013
• Subjects: OPTICAL ELEMENTS, SYSTEMS, OR APPARATUS; OPTICS; PHYSICS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To address deterioration in parallelism of a plurality of optical fibers due to intrusion of an adhesive in a binding part of end-surface closely arranged multicore optical fibers, and address an increase in optical loss due to meandering of each optical fiber.SOLUTION: In an end-surface closely arranged multicore optical fiber, at least three or more of two types or more optical fibers are arranged in one or more guide grooves provided on a first substrate 501, sequentially from a lowermost layer, with each end surface closely arranged. Each of the optical fibers is sequentially placed, and the arranging position is regulated by only two surfaces closely arranged to the side face of the optical fiber out of a plurality of guide walls 541-544 constituting the guide groove and/or the optical fiber side faces that are placed in the lower layer than the optical fiber. Further, the plurality of guide walls constituting the guide groove and/or the side faces of the optical fibers placed at the lower layer than the optical fiber, and the optical fiber side face come into direct contact with each other. In the other end surface of each optical fiber, each of the optical fibers is independently formed of each other.