Optical fibers as beam shapers: from Gaussian beams to optical vortices

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Date
2016
Authors
Ana Rita Ribeiro
Dahal,P
Ariel Guerreiro
Pedro Jorge
Viegas,J
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Abstract
This Letter reports a new method for the generation of optical vortices using a micropatterned optical fiber tip. Here, a spiral phase plate (2 pi phase shift) is micromachined on the tip of an optical fiber using a focused ion beam. This is a high resolution method that allows milling the fibers with nanoscale resolution. The plate acts as a beam tailoring system, transforming the fundamental guided mode, specifically a Gaussian mode, into the Laguerre-Gaussian mode (LG(01)), which carries orbital angular momentum. The experimental results are supported by computational simulations based on the finite-difference time-domain method. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America
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