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Zeisberger M, Schneidewind H, Wieduwilt T, Yermakov O, Schmidt MA. Nanoprinted microstructure-assisted light incoupling into high-numerical aperture multimode fibers. OPTICS LETTERS 2024; 49:1872-1875. [PMID: 38621027 DOI: 10.1364/ol.521471] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/13/2024] [Accepted: 03/10/2024] [Indexed: 04/17/2024]
Abstract
The coupling of light into optical fibers is limited by the numerical aperture (NA). Here, we show that large-area polymer axial-symmetric microstructures printed on silica multimode fibers improve their incoupling performance by two to three orders of magnitude beyond the numerical aperture limit. A ray-optical mathematical model describing the impact of the grating-assisted light coupling complements the experimental investigation. This study clearly demonstrates the improvement of incoupling performance by nanoprinting microstructures on fibers, opening new horizons, to the best of our knowledge, for multimode fiber applications in life sciences, quantum technologies, and "lab-on-fiber" devices.
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Li M, Zhu H, Huang Y, Yin R, Yang Z, Zhao M. Elliptical spiral zone plate fabrication using direct laser writing for generating an elliptical perfect vortex beam. OPTICS LETTERS 2024; 49:1285-1288. [PMID: 38426994 DOI: 10.1364/ol.518123] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/15/2024] [Accepted: 02/12/2024] [Indexed: 03/02/2024]
Abstract
We report and fabricate a novel, to our knowledge, vortex beam generator called elliptical spiral zone plate (ESZP) using direct laser writing (DLW), which can generate the elliptical perfect vortex beam (EPVB). It is shown that the radius of the EPVB can be adjusted by tuning the control parameters of the ESZP. It is verified through the interference experiment and the Hermitian-Gaussian light field that the topological charge of the EPVB is consistent with the design. In addition, we integrate the ESZP at the tip of the single-mode fiber. Our work may set the scene for applications in fiber optical tweezers, optical communications, and integrated optics.
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Jiang M, Zhang M, Xie F, Qin F, Sun LP, Li X, Cao Y. Multifocal meta-fiber based on the fractional Talbot effect. OPTICS LETTERS 2024; 49:318-321. [PMID: 38194558 DOI: 10.1364/ol.507748] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/09/2023] [Accepted: 12/06/2023] [Indexed: 01/11/2024]
Abstract
Multi-focusing of light is a crucial capability for photonic devices that can be effectively achieved by precisely modulating the phase delay on the incident wavefront. However, integrating functional structures into optical fibers for remote light focusing remains challenging due to the complex device design and limited fabrication approaches. Here, we present the design and fabrication of metalens array on the end-face of a tailored single-mode step-index fiber for focusing light field into closely packed focal spot array. The metalenses are configured based on the fractional Talbot effect and benefit a modular design capability. Light passing through the optical fiber can be focused into different focal planes. With a synergistic 3D laser nanoprinting technique based on two-photon polymerization, high-quality meta-fibers are demonstrated for focusing light parallelly with a uniform numerical aperture (NA) as high as approximately 0.77. This may facilitate various applications such as optical trapping, generation of sophisticated beam profiles, and boosting light coupling efficiencies.
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Li C, Wieduwilt T, Wendisch FJ, Márquez A, Menezes LDS, Maier SA, Schmidt MA, Ren H. Metafiber transforming arbitrarily structured light. Nat Commun 2023; 14:7222. [PMID: 37940676 PMCID: PMC10632407 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43068-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/30/2023] [Accepted: 10/30/2023] [Indexed: 11/10/2023] Open
Abstract
Structured light has proven useful for numerous photonic applications. However, the current use of structured light in optical fiber science and technology is severely limited by mode mixing or by the lack of optical elements that can be integrated onto fiber end-faces for wavefront engineering, and hence generation of structured light is still handled outside the fiber via bulky optics in free space. We report a metafiber platform capable of creating arbitrarily structured light on the hybrid-order Poincaré sphere. Polymeric metasurfaces, with unleashed height degree of freedom and a greatly expanded 3D meta-atom library, were 3D laser nanoprinted and interfaced with polarization-maintaining single-mode fibers. Multiple metasurfaces were interfaced on the fiber end-faces, transforming the fiber output into different structured-light fields, including cylindrical vector beams, circularly polarized vortex beams, and arbitrary vector field. Our work provides a paradigm for advancing optical fiber science and technology towards fiber-integrated light shaping, which may find important applications in fiber communications, fiber lasers and sensors, endoscopic imaging, fiber lithography, and lab-on-fiber technology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chenhao Li
- Chair in Hybrid Nanosystems, Nanoinstitute Munich, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80539, Munich, Germany
| | | | - Fedja J Wendisch
- Chair in Hybrid Nanosystems, Nanoinstitute Munich, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80539, Munich, Germany
| | - Andrés Márquez
- I.U. Física Aplicada a las Ciencias y las Tecnologías, Universidad de Alicante, P.O. Box 99, 03080, Alicante, Spain
- Dpto. de Física, Ing. de Sistemas y Teoría de la Señal, Universidad de Alicante, P.O. Box 99, 03080, Alicante, Spain
| | - Leonardo de S Menezes
- Chair in Hybrid Nanosystems, Nanoinstitute Munich, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80539, Munich, Germany
- Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, 50670-901, Recife-PE, Brazil
| | - Stefan A Maier
- Chair in Hybrid Nanosystems, Nanoinstitute Munich, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80539, Munich, Germany.
- School of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Science, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, 3800, Australia.
- Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
| | - Markus A Schmidt
- Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, 07745, Jena, Germany.
- Abbe Center of Photonics and Faculty of Physics, FSU Jena, 07745, Jena, Germany.
- Otto Schott Institute of Material Research, FSU Jena, 07745, Jena, Germany.
| | - Haoran Ren
- School of Physics and Astronomy, Faculty of Science, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, 3800, Australia.
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Zhu H, Li M, Hu T, Zhao M, Yang Z. Three-dimensional printing of a beam expander to enable the combination of hundred-micron optical elements and a single-mode fiber. OPTICS LETTERS 2023; 48:5379-5382. [PMID: 37831872 DOI: 10.1364/ol.499114] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/27/2023] [Accepted: 09/14/2023] [Indexed: 10/15/2023]
Abstract
We use a flexible two-photon photopolymerization direct laser writing to fabricate an integrated diffractive lens system on a fiber tip to expand the output beam of the fiber. The results show that the micro-integrated beam expander based on double lenses (axial size of about 100 μm) has a magnification of 5.9 and a loss of 0.062 dB. Subsequently, we demonstrate the fabrication of a spiral phase plate (diffractive optical elements) and micro-lens arrays (refractive optical elements) on an integrated beam expander, and their optical properties are measured and analyzed, respectively. This Letter is an exploration of the future integrated micro-optical systems on an optical fiber tip.
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