Fabricating fiber cavity mirror substrates compatible with high coupling efficiency

Fiber optical cavities offer small mode volumes and correspondingly strong light-matter interactions in an open Fabry-Perot geometry. However, existing fabrication techniques do not reliably produce substrates with surface profiles amenable to high mode matching between the cavity mode and fiber core, thereby limiting the achievable collection efficiency. Here we present a technique to fabricate fiber mirror substrates while using in situ reflectometry to constrain the achievable mode matching prior to coating. By measuring the back-reflection from freshly cleaved fiber tips, we pre-select 138 fibers compatible with 96.5-99.5% mode matching, and after a single CO₂ laser ablation pulse, these fibers remained compatible with 95.3-99.2%. This simple technique provides rapid feedback during each stage of substrate fabrication, greatly enhancing the yield of viable fiber mirror substrates prior to (expensive) coating runs.