Abstract: A light modulator useful for modulating a diverging light beam exiting from an optical fiber. In one embodiment, the modulator has a focusing lens and two flat partial mirrors. The lens collimates the light, one half of which respectively strikes each of the partial mirrors orthogonally. These mirrors reflect the light back onto itself causing, depending on the relationship between the wavelength of the incident light and the differences in path lengths, varying degrees of constructive or destructive interference. The difference in path length can be varied electrically if the partial mirrors are embodied as etched semiconductor foils which are controllably displaced in an electrostatic field set up between the foils and a substrate electrode.

Abstract: A light modulator for modulating a light beam which emerges in the shape of a cone from an optical fiber. The modulator has a mirror which can be brought into at least two different states. In the one of these states, the light diverges in such a way that only a small portion returns back into the fiber. In the other of these states, however, more of the light returns back into the fiber. In one embodiment, the mirror is embodied as an etched semiconductor foil and is deformed by the force of a variable electrostatic field between the foil and an electrode which has been placed on a substrate.