A fiber-optic adapter connects two optical fiber connectors in the fiber optic lines.''Network World'', 24 Nov 1986, Vol. 3, No. 38, ISSN 0887-7661

Bare fiber adapter

Bare fiber adapter is used as the medium to temporarily link the bare optical fiber to fiber optic equipment. Available with FC, SC, ST. LC, MU, SMA connectors with round or square type press button.

Couplers

A fiber optic coupler is a device used in

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

systems with one or more input fibers and one or several output fibers.

Light Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 tera ...

entering an input fiber can appear at one or more outputs and its

power distribution Electric power distribution is the final stage in the delivery of electric power; it carries electricity from the transmission system to individual consumers. Distribution substations connect to the transmission system and lower the transmissio ...

potentially depending on the

wavelength In physics, the wavelength is the spatial period of a periodic wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. It is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase on the wave, such as two adjacent crests, tro ...

and

polarization Polarization or polarisation may refer to: Mathematics *Polarization of an Abelian variety, in the mathematics of complex manifolds *Polarization of an algebraic form, a technique for expressing a homogeneous polynomial in a simpler fashion by ...

. Such couplers can be fabricated in different ways, for example by thermally fusing fibers so that their cores get into intimate contact. If all involved fibers are single-mode (supporting only a single mode per polarization direction for a given wavelength), there are certain physical restrictions on the performance of the coupler. In particular, it is not possible to combine two or more inputs of the same optical frequency into one single-polarization output without significant excess losses. However, such a restriction does not occur for different input wavelengths: there are couplers that can combine two inputs at different wavelengths into one output without exhibiting significant losses. Wavelength-sensitive couplers are used as multiplexers in

wavelength-division multiplexing In fiber-optic communications, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) is a technology which multiplexes a number of optical carrier signals onto a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths (i.e., colors) of laser light. This techniq ...

(WDM) telecom systems to combine several input channels with different wavelengths, or to separate channels.

References

Fiber optics {{optics-stub