Product Portfolio
AMS Technologies carries a broad range of compact-size fiber optic circulators. Polarization-insensitive optical circulators are available with three or four ports, characterized with low insertion loss, high isolation, low PDL, low PMD and excellent environmental stability and reliability. These components are widely used in fiber amplifier systems, optical fiber sensors and bi-direction communication systems.

Miniature inline 3-port circulators with either single mode (SM) or Panda polarization maintaining (PM) fiber are ideal for OEM applications. While the standard PM fiber alignment is for all power to be transmitted along the slow axis of each fiber (fast axis blocking), any of the three ports can be aligned for fast axis coupling. High extinction ratio connectors can also be installed.

The series of 3-port single mode (SM) as well as 3-port and 4-port polarization maintaining (PM) fiber optic circulators offers a selection of highly reliable low-wavelength (780 to 1064 nm) or higher-wavelength (1310 to 2000 nm) devices for standard or high power, covering C+L and S+C+L-bands.

Polarization maintaining (PM) fiber optic isolators feature wavelengths ranging from 780 to 1060 nm, with three or four ports, for standard or high power. Micro-optic PM isolators for longer wavelengths (1064-1550 nm) are also available, with three ports as well as four ports.

Related Products
Our fiber optic circulators can be used with our broad range of optical fibers, patch cables, bundles and assemblies, driven by our various lasers and light sources.

Beyond fiber optic circulators, further fiber components are available like collimators and focusers, light to fiber couplers/collimators, fiber connectors, mating sleeves and adapters, fiber WDMs, combiners, splitters and couplers, fiber amplifiers, attenuators or polarization controllers, as well as fiber optic switches, delay lines, filters, isolators and other fiber optic assemblies.

Our portfolio of precision optics includes optical lenses, optics assemblies, optical filters, optical prisms, optical mirrors, optical beamsplitters, etalons, optical gratings, optical isolators and polarization optics as well as optical scanners and deflectors or optical modulators, q-switches and pockels cells.

For mounting, adjusting and moving our optical components with high precision, we carry an array of optomechanics and motion control such as optical mounts, rotary and translation stages plus motion controllers as well as optical tables, breadboards and platforms.

Definition
Similar in function to an electronic circulator, fiber optic circulators are optical components with three or four ports, designed in such a way that light entering at one port exits at the numerically following port. Light entering the circulator at port 1 therefore exits at port 2. Light entering port 2 (including any reflection of the light exiting there) does not exit at port 1, but at port 3 – and so on.

With this set-up, fiber optic circulators can be used as a signal router that transmits light from an input fiber to an output fiber but directs the light returning through this output fiber into a third fiber. In this way, they work similarly to an optical isolator (protecting the input fiber from backscattered light power) – with the difference that this backscattered light is output separately and can thus be used.

A typical application for fiber optic circulators is to separate light signals that pass through an optical fiber in opposite directions. With this approach, for example bidirectional transmission in a single fiber becomes possible – utilizing a three-port circulator at either end.

Optical circulators have a high isolation of the incident from the reflected light power and offer a low insertion loss. Therefore, they are often used in more complex communication systems, medical, imaging and OCT applications as well as in fiber optic sensor technology.

Optical circulators show non-reciprocal optical behaviour – should light passing through the device experience any changes, these changes will not be reversed when the light travels in the opposite direction.

Alternative Terms: Faraday Rotator; Optical Circulator; Fiber Circulator