Iterative Refinement of Arbitrary Micro-Optical Surfaces

TL;DR

This paper presents an adaptive iterative micro-milling technique for ultra-precise, arbitrary micro-optical surface fabrication, significantly improving surface quality and versatility without extensive surface engineering.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel adaptive iterative refinement method for micro-milling that enables high-precision, arbitrary surface creation on various materials, reducing preparation time.

Findings

Produced low-roughness spherical mirrors with small radii

Demonstrated arbitrary surface geometries on fiber tips and flats

Applied to different materials including GRIN lenses

Abstract

We introduce an adaptive optical refinement method enabling ultra-precise micro-milling of arbitrary surfaces. Through repeated iteration, our method reduces surface error without requiring significant specific surface engineering. This remediates the long sample preparation times and lack of refinement capability that previously reported methods suffer from. The iterative refinement milling method was used to produce spherical mirrors with small radii of curvature and low surface roughness for use in micro Fabry-Perot cavities. We demonstrate the use of this adaptive process to produce a variety of arbitrary surface geometries on both optical fiber tips as well as optical flats. We additionally discuss our capability to apply iterative refinement milling adaptively to various materials, including to construct GRIN lenses.