Submicrometer measurements of tapered optical fibers with low aperture optical microscopes

International audienceA simple and accurate determination of the diameters of tapered optical fibers is essential for the development of new optical components. For this purpose, we propose a technique to increase by more than 10 the resolution of optical microscopes. This technique can be readily implemented on any microscope. We demonstrated it by measuring the diameter of a tapered optical fiber with a resolution better than 100 nm with a x10 optical microscope whose aperture is 0.28