Surface nanoscale axial photonics: Robust fabrication of high quality factor microresonators

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a highly precise method for fabricating high-quality microresonators on optical fibers using nanoscale modifications with lasers, achieving sub-angstrom accuracy to improve photonic device robustness.

Contribution

It introduces a super-accurate fabrication technique for high Q-factor microresonators via nanoscale laser modifications, enhancing reproducibility and precision of the SNAP platform.

Findings

Fabrication accuracy better than 2 angstroms in fiber radius variation

Successful creation of high Q-factor microresonators

Use of CO2 and UV excimer lasers for nanoscale modifications

Abstract

Recently introduced Surface Nanoscale Axial Photonics (SNAP) makes it possible to fabricate high Q-factor microresonators and other photonic microdevices by dramatically small deformation of the optical fiber surface. To become a practical and robust technology, the SNAP platform requires methods enabling reproducible modification of the optical fiber radius at nanoscale. In this Letter, we demonstrate super-accurate fabrication of high Q-factor microresonators by nanoscale modification of the optical fiber radius and refractive index using the CO2 laser and the UV excimer laser beam exposures. The achieved fabrication accuracy is better than 2 angstroms in variation of the effective fiber radius.