Lead-silicate glass optical microbubble resonator

Microbubble whispering gallery resonators have the potential to become key components in a variety of active and passive photonic circuit devices by offering a range of significant functionalities. Here, we report on the fabrication, optical characterization, and theoretical analysis of lead-silicate glass, optical microbubble resonators. Evanescent field coupling to the microbubbles was achieved using a 1 µm diameter, silica microfiber at a wavelength of circa 775 nm. High Q-factor modes were efficiently excited in both single-stem and two-stem, lead-silicate glass, microbubble resonators, with bubble diameters of 38 µm (single-stem) and 48 µm (two-stem). Whispering gallery mode resonances with Q-factors as high as 2.3x10^5 (single-stem) and 7x10^6 (two-stem) were observed. By exploiting the high-nonlinearity of the lead-silicate glass, this work will act as a catalyst for studying a range of nonlinear optical effects in microbubbles, such as Raman scattering and four-wave mixing, at low optical powers.

[1]  T. Kippenberg,et al.  Cavity Optomechanics: Back-Action at the Mesoscale , 2008, Science.

[2]  Jonathan M. Ward,et al.  Single input Spherical Microbubble Resonator , 2011 .

[3]  Ivan Favero,et al.  Optomechanics of deformable optical cavities , 2009 .

[4]  Ryan C Bailey,et al.  High-Q optical sensors for chemical and biological analysis. , 2012, Analytical chemistry.

[5]  S. Arnold,et al.  Whispering-gallery-mode biosensing: label-free detection down to single molecules , 2008, Nature Methods.

[6]  Jonathan Ward,et al.  Quasi-droplet microbubbles for high resolution sensing applications. , 2014, Optics express.

[7]  Matthew R Foreman,et al.  Single-molecule nucleic acid interactions monitored on a label-free microcavity biosensor platform. , 2014, Nature nanotechnology.

[8]  A. Doherty,et al.  Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics: Coherence in Context , 2002, Science.

[9]  Shanhui Fan,et al.  Coherent single photon transport in one-dimensional waveguide coupledwith superconducting quantum bits , 2005, 2006 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and 2006 Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference.

[10]  Oliver Benson,et al.  Tuning whispering gallery modes using internal aerostatic pressure. , 2011, Optics letters.

[11]  Ming Ding,et al.  High-Q Bismuth-Silicate Nonlinear Glass Microsphere Resonators , 2012, IEEE Photonics Journal.

[12]  Síle Nic Chormaic,et al.  Trapping of a microsphere pendulum resonator in an optical potential , 2008, 0811.2585.

[13]  Jonathan Ward,et al.  Single-input spherical microbubble resonator. , 2011, Optics letters.

[14]  Lei Xu,et al.  Kerr parametric oscillations and frequency comb generation from dispersion compensated silica micro-bubble resonators. , 2013, Optics express.

[15]  R. Windeler,et al.  Optical microbubble resonator. , 2010, Optics letters.

[16]  G. S. Murugan,et al.  Lead silicate glass microsphere resonators with absorption-limited Q , 2011 .