Fabrication of surface nanoscale axial photonics structures with a femtosecond laser

Surface nanoscale axial photonics (SNAP) structures are fabricated with a femtosecond laser for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The inscriptions introduced by the laser pressurize the fiber and cause its nanoscale effective radius variation. We demonstrate the subangstrom precise fabrication of individual and coupled SNAP microresonators having the effective radius variation of several nanometers. Our results pave the way to a novel ultraprecise SNAP fabrication technology based on the femtosecond laser inscription.

Large scale fabrication of nitrogen vacancy-embedded diamond nanostructures for single-photon source applications

Some color centers in diamond can serve as quantum bits which can be manipulated with microwave pulses and read out with laser, even at room temperature. However, the photon collection efficiency of bulk diamond is greatly reduced by refraction at the diamond/air interface. To address this issue, we fabricated arrays of diamond nanostructures, differing in both diameter and top end shape, with HSQ and Cr as the etching mask materials, aiming toward large scale fabrication of single-photon sources with enhanced collection efficiency made of nitrogen vacancy (NV) embedded diamond. With a mixture of O2 and CHF3 gas plasma, diamond pillars with diameters down to 45 nm were obtained. The top end shape evolution has been represented with a simple model. The tests of size dependent single-photon properties confirmed an improved single-photon collection efficiency enhancement, larger than tenfold, and a mild decrease of decoherence time with decreasing pillar diameter was observed as expected. These results provide useful information for future applications of nanostructured diamond as a single-photon source.

Fabrication and application of short and novel structure in-fibre Bragg gratings

This thesis presents details on progress made in the fabrication and application of short and novel structure fibre Bragg gratings. The basic theoretical concepts of in-fibre Bragg gratings and photosensitive mechanisms are introduced together with an overview of fabrication methods and applications presented to date. The fabrication of fibre Bragg gratings using a quadrupled Nd:YAG laser is presented and some of the issues of grating fabrication using a fabrication using a phasemask are investigated, including the variation of the separation of the fibre and phasemask, and other alignment issues. A new apodisation technique is presented, enabling the production of gratings with a wide range of spectral profiles. The technique is used to investigate the design and fabrication of length limited fibre Bragg gratings for use in telecommunication systems as filters. Application to devices designed for use in WDM systems is presented. The use of fibre Bragg gratings as high spatial resolution distributed sensors is investigated. Grating sensing arrays comprising very short apodised gratings are demonstrated and Chirped Moiré gratings are implemented as distributed sensors achieving high spatial resolution with miniature point sensing sub-elements. A novel grating sensing element designed to imitate an interferometer is also presented. Finally, the behaviour of gratings fabricated in Boron-Germania-co-doped fibre is investigated, revealing atypical behaviour of the Bragg wavelength during ageing.

Evaluation of Impact of Beam Size on Fibre Bragg Grating Fabrication

Fabrication of gratings has gone a long way since the onset by Kenneth Hill in 1976. Basic fabrication techniques such as holographic and phase-mask which have distinguishing advantages (variable wavelength, and high repeatability consecutively) have since been modified in an effort to combine the advantages of both methods. These basic methods are inherently simple and have few controls, they have been combined and modified over time to enable the possibility of fabricating gratings with complex modulation index and phase profiles.

Evaluation of impact of beam size on fibre Bragg grating fabrication

Fabrication of gratings has gone a long way since the onset by Kenneth Hill in 1976. Basic fabrication techniques such as holographic and phase-mask which have distinguishing advantages (variable wavelength, and high repeatability consecutively) have since been modified in an effort to combine the advantages of both methods. These basic methods are inherently simple and have few controls, they have been combined and modified over time to enable the possibility of fabricating gratings with complex modulation index and phase profiles.