Low-1oss fusion splicing of PCVD-DFSM fibers

Fusion splicing of dispersion flattened single mode (DFSM) fibers results in wavelength independent average repair splice losses of 0.05 dB which are as low as for conventional single mode (SM-) fibers and do not limit field application. Splices between DFSM-fibers and conventional SM-fibers showed surprisingly low splice losses in spite of the large difference in spotsize. This is caused by internal diffusion processes which result in a steady transition of the spotsizes.