1210.7592 (K. P. Nayak et al.)

Photonic crystal formation on optical nanofibers using femtosecond laser
ablation technique    [PDF]

K. P. Nayak, K. Hakuta

We demonstrate that thousands of periodic nano-craters are fabricated on a subwavelength-diameter tapered optical fiber, an optical nanofiber, by irradiating with just a single femtosecond laser pulse. A key aspect of the fabrication is that the nanofiber itself acts as a cylindrical lens and focuses the femtosecond laser beam on its shadow surface. We also demonstrate that such periodic structures on the nanofiber, act as a 1-D photonic crystal (PhC). Such PhC structures on the nanofiber will strongly enhance the field confinement in such a tapered fiber-based system and may open new avenues in nanophotonics and quantum information technology.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.7592