Optical transmittance degradation in tapered fibers

Abstract

We investigated the cause of optical transmittance degradation in tapered fibers. Degradation commences immediately after fabrication and it eventually reduces the transmittance to almost zero. It is a major problem that limits applications of tapered fibers. We systematically investigated the effect of the dust-particle density and the humidity on the degradation dynamics. The results clearly show that the degradation is mostly due to dust particles and that it is not related to the humidity. In a dust free environment it is possible to preserve the transmittance with a degradation of less than the noise (+/- ?0.02) over 1 week.

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Cited by in corpus (12)

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• Quantum-enhanced micro-mechanical displacement sensitivity
• Thermalization via Heat Radiation of an Individual Object Thinner than the Thermal Wavelength
• On-Chip Cavity Optomechanical Coupling
• Ultrathin fiber-taper coupling with nitrogen vacancy centers in nanodiamonds at cryogenic temperatures
• Transmission degradation and preservation for tapered optical fibers in rubidium vapor
• Ultralow-power nonlinear optics using tapered optical fibers in metastable xenon
• Coupling of ultrathin tapered fibers with high-Q microsphere resonators at cryogenic temperatures and observation of phase-shift transition from undercoupling to overcoupling
• Optical nanofiber temperature monitoring via double heterodyne detection