Laser Fabrication of Ship-in-a-bottle Microstructures in Sapphire

In this paper we propose the concept of a ship-in-a-bottle optical rotator, which is a microscale object, rotatable by a laser manipulation technique, inside a transparent solid. Femtosecond laserassisted etching of sapphire was used to fabricate this microstructure. We report our attempts at fabrication, and discuss the strategy for completing the fabrication.