Industrial Technology Research Institute

Yuh-Lin Cheng

Song-Fure Lin

K Roger Lee

An optical isolator is placed in the path of an input optical fiber and an output optical fiber, the optical isolator comprises: a first GRIN lens for receiving rays emitted from the input optical fiber and converging into parallel rays; a first birefringent crystal wedge for splitting the parallel rays into a first ray polarized along the birefringent crystal's optical axis and a second ray polarized perpendicularly to the optical axis; a second birefringent crystal wedge for recombining the first ray and the second ray wherein at least one of the first birefringent crystal wedge and the second birefringent crystal wedge comprises a birefringent crystal of YVO.sub.4 ; a second GRIN lens for focusing the recombined rays into the output optical fiber through the second birefringent crystal wedge; a Faraday rotator is mounted between the first birefringent crystal wedge and the second birefringent crystal wedge so that the rays emitted from the input optical fiber can be recombined and focused into the output optical fiber, and the rays reflected from the output optical fiber will be diverged and cannot be refocused into the input optical fiber.

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Tainan, Taiwan

Yuh-Lin Cheng