Optimal distance from high power laser diode to cylindrical microlens in a coupling system

In a practical coupling system, a cylindrical microlens is used to collimate the emission of a high powerlaser diode (LD) in the dimension perpendicular to the junction plane. Using passive alignment, the LD isplaced in the focus of the cylindrical microlens generally, regardless of the performance of the multimodeoptical fiber and the LD. In this paper, a more complete analysis is arrived at by ray-tracing technique,by which the angle θ of the ray after refraction is computed as a function of the angle θo of the ray beforerefraction. The focus of the cylindrical microlens is not always the optimal position of the LD. In fact, inorder to achieve a higher coupling efficiency, the optimal distance from the LD to the cylindrical microlensis dependent on not only the radius R and the index of refraction n of the cylindrical microlens, but alsothe divergence angle of the LD in the dimension perpendicular to the junction plane and the numericalaperture (NA) of the multimode optical fiber. The results of this discussion are in good agreement withexperimental results.