Stimulated Raman scattering in the evanescent field of nanofibers
The present PhD thesis explored nonlinear wave mixing with the strong evanescent field of nanofibers. The focus has been on the effect of stimulated Raman scattering which is activated by the interaction between such a strong evanescent field and the nonlinear liquid surrounding the nanofiber. In order to observe the stimulated Raman scattering, we investigated the nonlinear modeling to determine the needed characteristics of the nanofibers. The modal Raman gain was calculated to determine the optimal radius of nanofibers for each possible liquid. Considering the critical power and the damage threshold of our nanofibers, we found the minimum required interaction length. The condition of adiabacity of the tapers was also described. These specifications of nanofibers guide us towards the design of a proper pulling system. Several pulling systems and techniques are investigated for the fabrication of our specific nanofibers. We now are able to fabricate low loss uniform nanofibers of up to 10 cm long, a diameter down to 200 nm, with two identical low loss tapers by using our own designed translation stage pulling platform and implemented with the “variable heat brush” technique. With the achieved nanofibers, the Raman effect induced in the evanescent field was observed in both pure (ethanol) and binary mixture (toluene in ethanol) liquids. These first measurements are in good agreement with our simulation even without any fitting parameters in the modeling.