Patent ID: 6978061

Claim:
An optical switching device, comprising: a plurality of optical switches, in which each of said optical switches has a first port; N (N is a plural number) of second ports, which are capable of being optically connected to the first port, being disposed in parallel with said first port; a spectroscopy section capable of refracting a light beam, which is outputted from said first port or second ports, in the different directions depending on the wavelength as well as in the direction in which said first port and second ports are disposed; and a reflector capable of reflecting the light beams, which are refracted by the spectroscopy section in the different directions depending on the wavelength, in the reflection directions preset based on the wavelength, wherein each of said optical switches are adapted so that the reflected beams having said wavelength, which are reflected by the reflector, are inputted to the first or second ports disposed at a position corresponding to the reflection direction, and disposed integrally being piled up to plural layers, in which the optical switching device is formed so that said optical switches share the spectroscopy section with each other, the optical switching device further includes a first light control element that is formed integrally on the paths of a plurality of light beams, which are outputted from each of the first ports in each of said optical switches and propagate in space, and is capable of converting the plurality of light beams outputted from the first ports of said optical switches into collimated light beams to output the collimated light beams to relatively and substantially the same point on the spectroscopy section; a second light control element that is capable of condensing the light, which has the same wavelength in the light outputted from the first port or the second ports constituting a specific optical switch in said piled up optical switches and separated, to a point; and a third light control element that is, assuming that i is a positive integer number equal to N or less and the i-th column in the N of second ports of said plurality of optical switches disposed being piled up to plural layers is the second ports in the i-th set, formed integrally on the paths of the plurality of light beams, which are outputted from the second ports in the i-th set and propagate in space, and capable of converting the light beams outputted from the second ports of the plurality of optical switches into a plurality of collimated light beams to output the collimated light beams to substantially the same point in the spectroscopy section.