Nanostructured optical fibre tapers

Ding, M. and Brambilla, G. (2011) Nanostructured optical fibre tapers. Conference MediNano-4, 2011: The 4th Mediterranean Conference on Nanophotonics, Rome, Italy. 24 - 25 Oct 2011.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Since 2003 [1], optical fiber microwires (OFM) have increasingly attracted a considerable interest [2], because of their extraordinary properties, which include:
1) Strong confinement: the beam propagating in the OFM can be confined to the diffraction limit for a length thousands times longer than the Raleigh length, allowing for strong nonlinear interactions like nonlinear switching or high harmonic and supercontinuum generation;
2) Large evanescent fields: the power propagating outside the OFM physical boundary can be considerable if the OFM diameter (d) is significantly smaller than the wavelength, allowing for easy inter-OFM coupling and for the realization of high-Q resonators;
3) Configurability: OFM are mostly manufactured by stretching optical fibres, thus their input and output pigtails preserve the original optical fibres size and they allow for low-loss and easy connection to other fiberized components;
4) Flexibility: since moments of inertias are proportional to the power of d and OFMs have an extremely small size, extremely small bending radii (typically few microns) can be achieved;
5) Robustness: OFMs exhibit ultimate strengths in excess of 10GPa and can be easy handled with conventional optical lab equipment.

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