Interferometric and tomographic investigations of polymer microtips fabricated at the extremity of optical fibers

Abstract

In this paper we present a simple method of manufacturing micrometer-sized polymer elements at the extremity of both single mode and multimode optical fibers and its possible modifications in order to provide requested functionalities. We show that the knowledge about 3D distribution of refractive index and birefringence in these elements is required and that interferometric and elastooptics tomography are the methods which provide these data. Exemplary polymer microtips manufactured from the polymeric material with different concentration of heptafluorobutyric acid are investigated in tomographic systems and the obtained results are discussed in reference to the theoretically expected refractive index distributions.