Abstract

The nanostructured micro-optics technology [1], which has been used successfully to fabricate a wide range of micro-optical devices, gives unparalleled design freedom in the development of high frequency structures. Using successive stack-and-draw processes (Figure 1) features significantly below the wavelength of incident light can be achieved, allowing the development of micro-optical structures which can exploit optical parameters unavailable to more conventionally manufactured micro-optical components. One such class of micro-optical component is customised birefringent materials where orthogonal polarisations of light encounter different effective refractive indices leading to a change in the polarisation state of the incident light. This birefringence, which has been verified experimentally, is primarily determined by the refractive indices of the constituent glasses and is effectively constant over several hundred nanometres. This fact hints at the possibility of the fabrication of a zero-order wave plate capable of operating over the entirety of the visible spectrum or over a significant proportion of the near IR spectrum. In this paper we will present the latest results concerning the development of such a set of wave plates and demonstrate that they can be used to manipulate the polarisation state of a wide range of incident wavelengths in a fibre optic system.

© 2013 IEEE