An optical fiber includes: a core portion made of glass; a cladding portion that is located on an outer periphery of the core portion and that is made of glass having a lower refractive index than a refractive index of the core portion; and a coating portion that covers an outer periphery of the cladding portion. Further, an average value of a relative refractive-index difference of a center core of the core portion is 0.1 to 0.5%, a fiber diameter including the coating portion is equal to or smaller than 220 μm, an effective cutoff wavelength is longer than 1260 nm and smaller than 1530 nm, and a mode field diameter of light at 1550 nm is equal to or larger than 9 μm.

A single mode optical fiber is provided that includes a core region having an outer radius ri and a maximum relative refractive index Δ.sub.1max. The single mode optical fiber further includes a cladding region surrounding the core region, the cladding region includes a depressed-index cladding region, a relative refractive index Δ.sub.3 of the depressed-index cladding region increasing with increased radial position. The single mode optical fiber has a bend loss at 1550 nm for a 15 mm diameter mandrel of less than about 0.75 dB/turn, a bend loss at 1550 nm for a 20 mm diameter mandrel of less than about 0.2 dB/turn, and a bend loss at 1550 nm for a 30 mm diameter mandrel of less than 0.005 dB/turn. Additionally, the single mode optical fiber has a mode field diameter of 9.0 microns or greater at 1310 nm wavelength.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a multicore optical fiber, a design method for the multicore optical fiber and an optical transmission method using the multicore optical fiber including four cores having a standard cladding diameter of 125±1 μm for an existing single mode optical fiber covering several thousands of kilometers of transmission. The multicore optical fiber according to the present invention disposes two-stage claddings with different refractive indices around each core, and designates as a predetermined range, a core radius a1, a radius a2 of a first cladding region surrounding each core, specific refractive index Δ1 relative to the core of the first cladding region and a specific refractive index Δ2 relative to the core of a second cladding region including four cores and the first cladding region.

The present disclosure provides an optical fibre (100). The optical fibre (100) includes a glass core region (102). The glass core region (102) has a core relative refractive index profile. The core relative refractive index profile is a super Gaussian profile. In addition, the optical fibre (100) includes a glass cladding region (108) over the glass core region (102). The optical fibre (100) has at least one of a mode field diameter in a range of 8.7 micrometers to 9.7 micrometers at wavelength of 1310 nanometers and an attenuation up to 0.18 dB/km. The optical fibre (100) has at least one of macro-bend loss up to 0.5 decibel per turn corresponding to wavelength of 1550 nanometer at bending radius of 7.5 millimeter. The optical fibre (100) has a macro-bend loss up to 1.0 decibel per turn corresponding to wavelength of 1625 nanometer at bending radius of 7.5 millimeter.

The present disclosure provides an optical fibre (100). The optical fibre (100) includes a glass core (102), a trench region (106) and a cladding (108). The trench region (106) has a trench curve parameter α.sub.trench in range of 5 to 8. The optical fibre (100) has a mode field diameter in range of 8.7 micrometers to 9.7 micrometers at wavelength of 1310 nanometer.

The invention concerns a method for characterizing mode group properties of multimodal light traveling through an optical component, comprising: launching a reference pulse of light with a wavelength λ.sub.t from a light source into said optical component, collecting light signal output by said optical component into a Mode Group Separating optical fiber; detecting light signal output by said Mode Group Separating optical fiber. The Mode Group Separating optical fiber is a multimode fiber with an α-profile graded index core with an α-value chosen such that said fiber satisfies the following criterion at the wavelength λ.sub.t: $\frac{.Math.\mathrm{\Delta \tau }.Math..L}{\Delta T_{\mathrm{REF}}}>4$
where: Δτ is a time delay difference between consecutive mode groups; L is a length of said fiber; ΔT.sub.REF is a Full Width at Quarter Maximum of said reference pulse.

An optical fiber includes: a core portion made of glass; and a cladding portion made of glass, having a refractive index lower than the refractive index of the core portion, and positioned on an outer periphery of the core portion. Further, the cladding portion has an outer diameter smaller than 100 μm, and the core portion has a relative refractive-index difference of 0.32% to 0.40% with respect to the cladding portion.

An optical fiber is provided that includes a core region, a cladding region having a radius less than about 62.5 microns; a polymer coating comprising a high-modulus layer and a low-modulus layer, wherein a thickness of the low-modulus inner coating layer is in a range of 4 microns to 20 microns, the modulus of the low-modulus inner coating layer is less than or equal to about 0.35 MPa, a thickness of the high-modulus coating layer is in a range of 4 microns to 20 microns, the modulus of the high-modulus inner coating layer is greater than or equal to about 1.6 GPa, and wherein a puncture resistance of the optical fiber is greater than 20 g, and wherein a microbend attenuation penalty of the optical fiber is less than 0.03 dB/km, and wherein an outer diameter of the coated optical fiber is less than or equal to 175 microns.

A coupled-core multicore optical fiber has a plurality of cores that are doped with alkali metals or chlorine to achieve low attenuation and a large effective area. The cores may be embedded in a common cladding region that may be fluorine doped. The cores may also be doped with chlorine, either with the alkali metals described above or without the alkali metals.

The present disclosure relates to a multi-core optical fiber including:

M (where M is a positive integer of 1 or larger) group(s) each consisting of N (where N is a positive integer of 2 or larger) core regions linearly arranged in a cross section; a cladding region that surrounds the plurality of core regions and has a refractive index lower than any of the plurality of core regions; and a coating region that surrounds the cladding region, wherein the plurality of core regions are arranged in line symmetry with respect to both imaginary lines orthogonal to each other at a center of the cladding region, a diameter of the cladding region is 180 μm or less, and a diameter of the coating region is 235 μm or more and 265 μm or less.