The evanescent coupling of light between a whispering-gallery-mode bottle microresonator and a sub-wavelength-diameter coupling fiber is actively stabilized by means of a Pound-Drever-Hall technique. We demonstrate the stabilization of a critically coupled resonator with a control bandwidth of 0.1 Hz, yielding a residual transmission of (9 pm 3) times 10^-3 for more than an hour. Simultaneously, the frequency of the resonator mode is actively stabilized.
We report on the fabrication of an ultrahigh quality factor, bottle-like microresonator from a microcapillary, and the realization of Raman lasing therein at pump wavelengths of $1.55~mathrm{mu m}$ and $780~mathrm{nm}$. The dependence of the Raman laser threshold on mode volume is investigated. The mode volume of the fundamental bottle mode is calculated and compared with that of a microsphere. Third-order cascaded Raman lasing was observed when pumped at $780~mathrm{nm}$. In principle, Raman lasing in a hollow bottle-like microresonator can be used in sensing applications. As an example, we briefly discuss the possibility of a high dynamic range, high resolution aerostatic pressure sensor.
Sensors that are able to detect and track single unlabelled biomolecules are an important tool both to understand biomolecular dynamics and interactions at nanoscale, and for medical diagnostics operating at their ultimate detection limits. Recently, exceptional sensitivity has been achieved using the strongly enhanced evanescent fields provided by optical microcavities and nano-sized plasmonic resonators. However, at high field intensities photodamage to the biological specimen becomes increasingly problematic. Here, we introduce an optical nanofibre based evanescent biosensor that operates at the fundamental precision limit introduced by quantisation of light. This allows a four order-of-magnitude reduction in optical intensity whilst maintaining state-of-the-art sensitivity. It enable quantum noise limited tracking of single biomolecules as small as 3.5 nm, and surface-molecule interactions to be monitored over extended periods. By achieving quantum noise limited precision, our approach provides a pathway towards quantum-enhanced single-molecule biosensors.
Microresonator-based Kerr frequency comb (microcomb) generation can potentially revolutionize a variety of applications ranging from telecommunications to optical frequency synthesis. However, phase-locked microcombs have generally had low conversion efficiency limited to a few percent. Here we report experimental results that achieve ~30% conversion efficiency (~200 mW on-chip comb power excluding the pump) in the fiber telecommunication band with broadband mode-locked dark-pulse combs. We present a general analysis on the efficiency which is applicable to any phase-locked microcomb state. The effective coupling condition for the pump as well as the duty cycle of localized time-domain structures play a key role in determining the conversion efficiency. Our observation of high efficiency comb states is relevant for applications such as optical communications which require high power per comb line.
There has been significant interest in imaging and focusing schemes that use evanescent waves to beat the diffraction limit, such as those employing negative refractive index materials or hyperbolic metamaterials. The fundamental issue with all such schemes is that the evanescent waves quickly decay between the imaging system and sample, leading to extremely weak field strengths. Using an entropic definition of spot size which remains well defined for arbitrary beam profiles, we derive rigorous bounds on this evanescent decay. In particular, we show that the decay length is only $w / pi e approx 0.12 w$, where $w$ is the spot width in the focal plane, or $sqrt{A} / 2 e sqrt{pi} approx 0.10 sqrt{A}$, where $A$ is the spot area. Practical evanescent imaging schemes will thus most likely be limited to focal distances less than or equal to the spot width.
Optical bottle beams can be used to trap atoms and small low-index particles. We introduce a figure of merit for optical bottle beams, specifically in the context of optical traps, and use it to compare optical bottle-beam traps obtained by three different methods. Using this figure of merit and an optimization algorithm, we identified optical bottle-beam traps based on a Gaussian beam illuminating a metasurface that are superior in terms of power efficiency than existing approaches. We numerically demonstrate a silicon metasurface for creating an optical bottle-beam trap.