A small mode volume tunable microcavity: Development and characterization

We report the realization of a spatially and spectrally tunable air-gap Fabry-Perot type microcavity of high finesse and cubic-wavelength-scale mode volume. These properties are attractive in the fields of opto-mechanics, quantum sensing, and foremost cavity quantum electrodynamics. The major design feature is a miniaturized concave mirror with atomically smooth surface and radius of curvature as low as 10 μm produced by CO2 laser ablation of fused silica. We demonstrate excellent mode-matching of a focussed laser beam to the microcavity mode and confirm from the frequencies of the resonator modes that the effective optical radius matches the physical radius. With these small radii, we demonstrate wavelength-size beam waists. We also show that the microcavity is sufficiently rigid for practical applications: in a cryostat at 4 K, the root-mean-square microcavity length fluctuations are below 5 pm.

[1]  M. N. Makhonin,et al.  Strong exciton-photon coupling in open semiconductor microcavities , 2014, 1403.4830.

[2]  Jason M. Smith,et al.  Controlling the emission from semiconductor quantum dots using ultra-small tunable optical microcavities , 2012, 1206.6046.

[3]  A. Muller,et al.  Feedback-controlled laser fabrication of micromirror substrates. , 2011, The Review of scientific instruments.

[4]  D. Hunger,et al.  Laser micro-fabrication of concave, low-roughness features in silica , 2011, 1109.5047.

[5]  P. Petroff,et al.  A tunable microcavity , 2011, 2012 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO).

[6]  G. Solomon,et al.  Ultra-high finesse, low mode volume Fabry-Perot microcavity , 2010, CLEO: 2011 - Laser Science to Photonic Applications.

[7]  Tilo Steinmetz,et al.  A fiber Fabry–Perot cavity with high finesse , 2010, 1005.0067.

[8]  Glenn S. Solomon,et al.  Coupling an epitaxial quantum dot to a fiber-based external-mirror microcavity , 2009, 0910.4658.

[9]  M. Atatüre,et al.  Quantum nature of a strongly coupled single quantum dot–cavity system , 2006, Nature.

[10]  D. Hunger,et al.  Stable fiber-based Fabry-Pérot cavity , 2006, physics/0606231.

[11]  V. Kulakovskii,et al.  Strong coupling in a single quantum dot–semiconductor microcavity system , 2004, Nature.

[12]  G. Rupper,et al.  Vacuum Rabi splitting with a single quantum dot in a photonic crystal nanocavity , 2004, Nature.

[13]  Scott W. Corzine,et al.  Analytic expressions for the reflection delay, penetration depth, and absorptance of quarter-wave dielectric mirrors , 1992 .

[14]  Herwig Kogelnik,et al.  Laser beams and resonators , 1966 .