title: Adaptive aberration compensation for three-dimensional micro-fabrication of photonic crystals in lithium niobate.
abstract: We present the use of a liquid crystal spatial light modulator to correct for the refractive-index mismatch induced spherical aberration in a high refractive-index lithium niobate crystal when a low repetition rate amplified laser is used for the direct fabrication of three-dimensional micro-structures. By correcting the aberration based on experimentally determined values, we show that the size of written structures decreases dramatically, which allows the fabrication of high quality micro-structures such as three-dimensional photonic crystals. We demonstrate that, through the use of adaptive optics, the fabrication depth and the stopgap strength in the corresponding photonic crystals are increased by a factor of two to three.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Micro-Photonics and CUDOS, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia.
authors.forename: Benjamin P
authors.initials: BP
authors.lastname: Cumming
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jesacher
authors.forename: Martin J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Booth
authors.forename: Tony
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gu