A light guide plate includes a through hole; at least one light transmitting component disposed within the light guide plate; at least one light incident surface; at least one light source; and at least one lens structure located between the light source and the incident surface. The light transmitting component is configured to transmit a portion of light that enters the light incident surface to a first region of the light guide plate that would otherwise be masked by the through hole. The light guide plate might backlight a display panel. A method for manufacturing the light guide plate is also provided.

A method of making a microstructured optical fiber including loading the core and cladding materials of the fiber with hydrogen and deuterium at a loading temperature; annealing the fiber at a selected temperature T.sub.anneal; pumping the fiber with radiation; and reducing the temperature of the fiber and storing the fiber at the reduced temperature before the step of pumping the fiber; and wherein the method allows the hydrogen and the deuterium to become bound to the core material and the cladding material.

An optical fiber includes a core region having a relative refractive index profile .sub.1 with a maximum relative refractive index .sub.1max in a range from 0.20% to 0.50%, and a surrounding cladding region that includes a triangular trench cladding region and an outer cladding region, and a relative refractive index .sub.3 with a minimum relative refractive index .sub.3min greater than 0.60% and less than 0.00%, and a trench volume greater than 30% m.sup.2. The outer cladding region has a relative refractive index .sub.4 in a range from 0.01% to 0.06% and a chlorine concentration greater than 1500 ppm. The optical fiber has a mode field diameter at 1310 nm of greater than 9.0 microns, a cable cutoff wavelength of less than 1260 nm, a zero dispersion wavelength between 1300 nm and 1324 nm, and low macrobend loss.

A uniform temperature profile is provided across the width of the core of a ribbon fiber laser or amplifier by the use of insulating elements at the core edges and a spatially variable gain in the fiber core. High average power ribbon fibers, enable a variety of applications such as practical laser cutting and beam combining.

A light guide plate includes a light guide plate body and at least one light transmitting component disposed in the light guide plate body. The light guide plate body has at least one light incident surface. A light transmitting component of the at least one light transmitting component is configured to transmit a portion of light that enters the light guide plate body from a light incident surface of the light guide plate body to a first region of the light guide plate body.

An all solid hybrid waveguiding structure provides large mode area, acceptable losses of the desired core mode and very high losses of the undesired next higher order mode in the core. Embodiments of the waveguide include a hybrid of low index barriers providing confinement by total internal reflection, and further include high index rings that support guided modes only at effective indices different from that of the desired core mode.

The optical fiber coupler array can be capable of providing a low-loss, high-coupling coefficient interface with high accuracy and easy alignment between a plurality of optical fibers (or other optical devices) with a first channel-to-channel spacing, and an optical device having a plurality of closely-spaced waveguide interfaces with a second channel-to-channel spacing, where each end of the optical fiber coupler array can be configurable to have different channel-to-channel spacing, each matched to a corresponding one of the first and second channel-to-channel spacing. Advantageously, the refractive indices and sizes of both inner and outer core, and/or other characteristics of vanishing core waveguides in the optical coupler array can be configured to reduce the back reflection for light propagating from the plurality of the optical fibers at the coupler first end to the optical device at the coupler second end, and/or vice versa.

An object is to provide a beam propagating method capable of satisfying desired output power and a desired propagation distance and a required condition of beam quality and a method of designing an optical fiber designing the structure of an optical fiber. According to the present invention, an effective core cross-sectional area A.sub.eff is calculated based on desired specification values and, by appropriately adjusting the structure of an optical fiber satisfying the effective core cross-sectional area and the number of modes to be propagated, the structure of the optical fiber is determined. In this way, by controlling the excitation ratio of a high-order mode at the time of coupling laser light in the optical fiber designed as above, light of high-output laser can be propagated a long distance with the beam quality maintained.

The invention relates to a supercontinuum light source comprising a microstructured optical fiber and a pump light source. The microstructured optical fiber comprises a core and a cladding region surrounding the core, as well as a first fiber length section, a second fiber length section and an intermediate fiber length section between said first and second fiber length sections. The first fiber length section comprises a core with a first characteristic core diameter. The second fiber length section comprises a core with a second characteristic core diameter, smaller than said first characteristic core diameter, where said second characteristic core diameter is substantially constant along said second fiber length section. The intermediate length section of the optical fiber comprises a core which is tapered from said first characteristic core diameter to said second characteristic core diameter over a tapered length.

The present application discloses a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-active photonic crystal fiber (PCF) probe including a biopsy needle in the PCF probe for integrated sample collection and SERS sensing of one or more analytes comprised in the sample. The PCF comprises solid core and a cladding region surrounding the solid core, wherein the cladding region comprises air holes functionalised by metallic nanoparticles. The application also provides a method for detecting one or more analytes using the PCF probe as well as the use of the PCF probe for the detection of one or more analytes.