Weakly guiding fibers.

Thin glass fibers imbedded into a glass cladding of slightly lower refractive index represent a promising medium for optical communication. This article presents simple formulas and functions for the fiber parameters as a help for practical design work. It considers the propagation constant, mode delay, the cladding field depth, and the power distribution in the fiber cross section. Plots vs frequency of these parameters are given for 70 modes.