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The second life of optical fiber tapers

The second life of optical fiber tapers
The second life of optical fiber tapers
Since 2003, when the first paper on optical fiber nanowires was published, optical fiber tapers (OFTs) have attracted an increasing interest. This talk will discuss the OFT properties and newly-discovered applications. The former include: 1) Robustness: OFTs exhibit an extraordinarily high ultimate strength, allowing for relatively easy-handling with conventional optical tools or even by hand. 2) Large evanescent fields: at diameters considerably smaller than the wavelength, the fraction of power propagating in the evanescent field outside the OFT physical boundary can be considerable. This has been exploited in the manufacture of high-Q resonators. 3) Strong confinement: at diameters comparable to the wavelength, the beam waist diameter is minimized, allowing observation of strong nonlinear effects such as third harmonic and supercontinuum generation or nonlinear optical switching. The confinement at the diffraction limit is limited only by loss and can occur over lengths several orders of magnitude longer than the conventional Rayleigh length (typically few microns). 4) Configurability: OFTs preserve the original optical fiber size at their input/output pigtails, thus they can be easily connected to other fiberized devices with negligible insertion losses. 5) Flexibility: the stress limit for bending is proportional to the moment of inertia, thus to the power of the OFT radius. Low-loss loops with few microns radii can be easily achieved. 6) Functionalization: silica is possibly the most widespread substrate in bioapplications, thus can be easily functionalized for binding specific bio compounds. Applications include a variety of sensors (including current, refractometric, temperature, biological concentrations) and devices (mode filtering, mode selection, resonators, polarization controllers).
Brambilla, G.
815d9712-62c7-47d1-8860-9451a363a6c8
Brambilla, G.
815d9712-62c7-47d1-8860-9451a363a6c8

Brambilla, G. (2012) The second life of optical fiber tapers. ENFMC '12: XXXV Encontro Nacional de Física da Matéria Condensada, Águas de Lindóia, Brazil. 14 - 18 May 2012.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Other)

Abstract

Since 2003, when the first paper on optical fiber nanowires was published, optical fiber tapers (OFTs) have attracted an increasing interest. This talk will discuss the OFT properties and newly-discovered applications. The former include: 1) Robustness: OFTs exhibit an extraordinarily high ultimate strength, allowing for relatively easy-handling with conventional optical tools or even by hand. 2) Large evanescent fields: at diameters considerably smaller than the wavelength, the fraction of power propagating in the evanescent field outside the OFT physical boundary can be considerable. This has been exploited in the manufacture of high-Q resonators. 3) Strong confinement: at diameters comparable to the wavelength, the beam waist diameter is minimized, allowing observation of strong nonlinear effects such as third harmonic and supercontinuum generation or nonlinear optical switching. The confinement at the diffraction limit is limited only by loss and can occur over lengths several orders of magnitude longer than the conventional Rayleigh length (typically few microns). 4) Configurability: OFTs preserve the original optical fiber size at their input/output pigtails, thus they can be easily connected to other fiberized devices with negligible insertion losses. 5) Flexibility: the stress limit for bending is proportional to the moment of inertia, thus to the power of the OFT radius. Low-loss loops with few microns radii can be easily achieved. 6) Functionalization: silica is possibly the most widespread substrate in bioapplications, thus can be easily functionalized for binding specific bio compounds. Applications include a variety of sensors (including current, refractometric, temperature, biological concentrations) and devices (mode filtering, mode selection, resonators, polarization controllers).

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: May 2012
Venue - Dates: ENFMC '12: XXXV Encontro Nacional de Física da Matéria Condensada, Águas de Lindóia, Brazil, 2012-05-14 - 2012-05-18
Organisations: Optoelectronics Research Centre

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 368437
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/368437
PURE UUID: 31bf89a6-f3f2-454c-a7e1-8302dab1f35d
ORCID for G. Brambilla: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-5730-0499

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Date deposited: 06 Sep 2014 15:35
Last modified: 07 Feb 2023 02:43

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