Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation

Fumihiro Nihei

Norio Kashima

A method for fusion-splicing aligned optical fibers using heat generated by gas discharge produced between electrodes which are energized by an AC voltage. At first, a high trigger voltage is applied across the electrodes to generate the discharge, after which an AC voltage lower than the trigger voltage is applied across the electrodes to produce steady-state discharge. The AC voltage is selected to satisfy the relation, 10t.sub.O .gtoreq.(t.sub.f +t.sub.d +t.sub.r), where t.sub.O is the time necessary for ions created by the discharge to flow from one of the electrodes to the other and t.sub.f, t.sub.d and t.sub.r are the fall time, the quiescent time and the rise time of the AC voltage. Alternatively, a sine-wave AC voltage is used having a frequency higher than 500 Hz.

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Mito, Japan

Fumihiro Nihei