Efficient light confinement with nanostructured optical microfiber tips

Nanostructured optical microfiber tips are proposed and experimentally demonstrated to efficiently confine light beyond the diffraction limit at high powers. Focused ion beam milling was used for the nanostructuring of gold-coated optical microfiber tips with both single-ramp and wedge geometries. Small apertures were formed by flat cutting or hole drilling and optical spot sizes of ∼λ/10 with high transmission efficiency were achieved. Numerical simulations were carried out to optimize the device design with circularly polarized light. Enhanced transmission efficiencies (higher than 10⁻²) were recorded by optimizing the overall light throughput along the fiber tips. The tip thermal behavior was investigated by launching high powers into the device and recording the tip position in a scanning near-field optical microscopy set-up. This nanostructured optical microfiber tip has the potential for applications in optical recording, scanning near-field optical microscopy and lithography.