Development of a system for laser splicing photonic crystal fiber.

Silica photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is a new type of fiber that has an array of microscopic air holes running along its length. Splicing PCF to standard single-mode fiber (SMF) is a challenging task, but it is also important because of the potential broad applications. Proper splicing of SMF to PCF is imperative in order to avoid collapsing of the PCF on the air holes; however, the two types of fiber require different laser powers for melting. A laser splicing system is developed to demonstrate its effectiveness at splicing between the large-mode-area PCF and SMF with low splice loss.