Controlling the optical fiber output beam profile by focused ion beam machining of a phase hologram on fiber tip.

Abstract

A phase hologram was machined on an optical fiber tip using a focused ion beam (FIB) system so that a ring-shaped beam emerges from the fiber tip. The fiber used for this work was a commercial single-mode optical fiber patch cable for a design wavelength of 633nm with a germanosilicate core. The ring-shaped beam was chosen to ensure a simple geometry in the required phase hologram, though the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm can be used to calculate a hologram for an arbitrary beam shape. The FIB machining took approximately 45 min at 30kV and 200pA. The radius of the resulting ring beam was 0.083m at 1m standoff, as compared to 0.1m as was initially desired. Results suggest that this imaging technique may provide a basis for a beam-shaping method with several advantages over the current commercial solutions, having permanent alignment, compactness, and mechanical robustness. However, it would appear that minimizing the speckle pattern will remain a critical challenge for this technique to become widely implemented.