The Photonic Lantern

TL;DR

Photonic lanterns are devices that efficiently connect multiple single-mode fibers to a multimode fiber, enabling low-loss optical interfaces crucial for advanced fiber-optic systems.

Contribution

This paper introduces the concept and design principles of photonic lanterns, highlighting their role in bridging single-mode and multimode optical systems.

Findings

Efficient low-loss coupling between single-mode and multimode fibers.

Adiabatic merging of cores preserves optical signal quality.

Potential applications in fiber-optic communications and sensing.

Abstract

Photonic lanterns are made by adiabatically merging several single-mode cores into one multimode core. They provide low-loss interfaces between single-mode and multimode systems where the precise optical mapping between cores and individual modes is unimportant.