ABSTRACT
The chapter introduces readers to basics of optical fibers. It first depicts the structure of multimode and single-mode fibers and explains the light propagation in terms of geometrical optics. Next, the chapter discusses the light propagation in terms of optical mode fields and the approximation of the fields in weakly guiding fibers by linearly polarized (LP) modes. Moreover, the dispersion of the modes is explained, that is, the relationship between the normalized propagation constant and normalized frequency. The final part of the chapter gives physical details on specific fiber types and introduces different types of polarization-maintaining fibers.
