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Abstract:The cladding thickness of trench-assisted multi-core fibers was theoretically and experimentally investigated in terms of excess losses of outer cores. No significant micro-bending loss increase was observed on multi-core fibers with the cladding thickness of about 30 µm. The tolerance for the micro-bending loss of a multi-core fiber is larger than that of the single core fiber. However, the cladding thickness will be limited by the occurrence of the excess loss on outer cores. The reduction of cladding thickness is probably limited around 40 µm in terms of the excess loss. The multi-core fiber with an effective area of 110 µm 2 at 1.55 µm and 181-µ m cladding diameter was realized without any excess loss.

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A multicore fiber with two-pitch layout is proposed to overcome the trade-off between core number and a cladding diameter of a standard hexagonal layout with a single-core pitch. A fabricated ten-core fiber simultaneously realizes effective area of about 120 μm 2 at 1550 nm, small crosstalk, and cladding diameter of 204 μm. The crosstalk between the center core and outer cores is about 30 dB smaller than that between outer cores. The small crosstalk of the center core would help to keep the transmission quality of the center core at the same level as that of the outer cores.

Measurement results of bending diameter dependence of the crosstalk of each core in a multi-core fiber are presented. The crosstalk of cores shows different diameter dependence although the difference in core parameters is very small. The behavior is explained by taking into account the change of propagation constant caused by the fluctuation in the diameter and the refractive index of cores. The diameter dependence simulated with coupled-power theory shows the same tendency with the measured crosstalk.