International audienceWe report high aspect ratio nanochannel fabrication in glass using single-shot femtosecond Bessel beams of sub-3 μJ pulse energies at 800 nm. We obtain near-parallel nanochannels with diameters in the range 200–800 nm, and aspect ratios that can exceed 100. An array of 230 nm diameter channels with 1.6 μm pitch illustrates the reproducibility of this approach and the potential for writing periodic structures. We also report proof-of-principle machining of a through-channel of 400 nm diameter in a 43 μm thick membrane. These results represent a significant advance of femtosecond laser ablation technology into the nanometric regime

The authors demonstrate how slow group velocities that are easily attainable at the band edge of photonic crystals can drastically enhance the electro-optical effect on tunable photonic crystal components. This property opens up the possibility of microsized nonlinear devices with low power requirement. In this letter we show how these possibilities for enhancement of nonlinear effects have been used to fabricate a 13×13 µm2 sized lithium niobate photonic crystal intensity modulator that shows an enhanced electro-optic effect 312 times bigger than the one predicted by the classical Pockels effect for an equivalent device in bulk material

We present the development and study of a single bowtie nano-aperture (BNA) at the end of a monomode optical fiber as an interface between near-fields/nano-optical objects and the fiber mode. To optimize energy conversion between BNA and the single fiber mode, the BNA is opened at the apex of a specially designed polymer fiber tip which acts as an efficient mediator (like a horn optical antenna) between the two systems. As a first application, we propose to use our device as polarizing electric-field nanocollector for scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM). However, this BNA-on-fiber probe may also find applications in nanolithography, addressing and telecommunications as well as in situ biological and chemical probing and trapping.