3D-printed fiber-based zeroth- and high-order Bessel beam generator

Abstract

Bessel beams (BBs) have gained prominence thanks to their diffraction-free propagation and self-healing properties. These beams are conventionally generated using different approaches, namely by transforming a narrow circular beam with a lens, using axicons or holographic beam-shaping techniques. These methods involve space-consuming optics. To overcome this limitation, in the past, efforts have been made to create BBs directly from optical fibers. However, these solutions have limited capability to generate BBs with on-demand optical parameters and only focused on creating zeroth-order BBs. Here, we propose a photonic structure that uses stacked miniaturized optical elements 3D printed in a single step on the fiber facet. Our design allows for the generation of both zeroth- and high-order BBs and fully controllable tailoring of the beams’ parameters, such as their diffraction-free propagation distance or the width of their central peak or node. Remarkably, we report for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the generation of high-order BBs from optical fibers. We expect our approach to be useful in applications such as optical and quantum communications, fiber-based sensors, microscopy, spectroscopy, and optical trapping.

On-chip generation of Bessel–Gaussian beam via concentrically distributed grating arrays for long-range sensing

“…The polarization characteristics of BGb generated by the integrated photonic chip are entirely different from those of Bessel beams in the previous works [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] (Supplementary Table S1). Here, a first-order vector beam with polarization singularity centered at the optical field is generated.…”

“…The integrated generation of the Bessel beam can provide a simple structure for effectively detecting light beams blocked by obstacles. However, the previously reported Bessel beam generator [10][11][12][13][14] cannot be used in long-distance scenes because of its short propagation distance. So far, there have seldom been reports on the rotation-speed measurement using the BGb generated on a chip.…”

“…It hinders the Bessel beam generation system from being applied in practical applications. Recently, several compact systems have been proposed to generate Bessel beams by using photonic integrated circuits (PICs) 10 , metasurfaces 11,12 , integrated waveguide 13 , and 3D-printed fiber 14 . The methods based on PICs only generate a quasi-1D Bessel beam.…”

Micro‐Optics 3D Printed via Multi‐Photon Laser Lithography

“…This approach achieved an order of magnitude reduction in the size of the focal spot and performed the optical trapping of red blood cells. Meanwhile, Reddy [ 126 ] recently presented a unified approach to generate zeroth and high‐order Bessel beams from single‐mode optical fibers.…”

Laser 3D printing of expanded beam connectors for optical connectivity

“…Recently, two-photon polymerization (TPP) has been increasingly adopted for free-form micro-optical elements and components on either glass/silicon substrates [3] or tip of fibers [4]. When used for the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) micro/nanostructures, TPP can offer many advantages, such as easy to implement, ability to fabricate complex 3D and free-form structures, as well as extremely high printing resolutions (~100 nm) and small feature sizes, compared with other micro/nanofabrication technologies, such as micro stereolithography [5], inkjet printing [6], self-assembly [7], electron/ion beam lithography [8], ultraviolet (UV) [9] and X-ray lithography [10], and nanoimprint lithography [11].…”