Coupling a Bessel Beam and Damaging Nanowires
by Daniel M. Todd
Supervisor: Dr. Carlos Trallero
Kansas State University Physics Department REU Program
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Welcome! This page summarizes my experience doing research for the Summer 2014 in the James R. MacDonald lab under Dr. Trallero. I have been looking to increase the transmission efficiency of light through an optical fiber using an axicon lens with my research partner, Joshua Nelson. I have also been assisting graduate student Adam Summers in his research on the damage thresholds of nanowires.
For my first project, I will attempt to pass a standard Helium-Neon laser through an optical lens called an axicon. Passing a laser beam through an axicon produces what is called a Bessel beam. I hope to show that focusing this kind of beam into a hollow core fiber will increase the transmission efficiency of the light passing through the fiber. We think this may be possible because when a normal laser beam enters a fiber, it comes out as a Bessel beam but with much less power. With that, we think that initially making a Bessel beam and passing it through the fiber will reduce the loss of light leaving the fiber. For my second project, I will be continuing Adam Summers’ work in measuring nanowire damage thresholds. I hope to analyze the differences in damaging intensities when changing the polarization of the light (or in what way the light strikes the nanowire). This will require the fabrication of many single-crystalline gold nanowires, so one of my tasks is to create an electrode design in which we can grow many nanowires at a time.
Final
Presentation
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This program is funded by the National Science Foundation through grant number PHY-1157044. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.