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 c
oupled 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.
Highly prolate-shaped whispering-gallery-mode bottle microresonators have recently attracted considerable attention due to their advantageous properties. We experimentally show that such resonators offer ultra-high quality factors, microscopic mode v
olumes, and near lossless in- and out-coupling of light using ultra-thin optical fibers. Additionally, bottle microresonators have a simple and customizable mode structure. This enables full tunability using mechanical strain and simultaneous coupling of two ultra-thin coupling fibers in an add-drop configuration. We present two applications based on these characteristics: In a cavity quantum electrodynamics experiment, we actively stabilize the frequency of the bottle microresonator to an atomic transition and operate it in an ultra-high vacuum environment in order to couple single laser-cooled atoms to the resonator mode. In a second experiment, we show that the bottle microresonator can be used as a low-loss, narrow-band add-drop filter. Using the Kerr effect of the silica resonator material, we furthermore demonstrate that this device can be used for single-wavelength all-optical signal processing.
We review our recent work on tunable, ultrahigh quality factor whispering-gallery-mode bottle microresonators and highlight their applications in nonlinear optics and in quantum optics experiments. Our resonators combine ultra-high quality factors of
up to Q = 3.6 times 10^8, a small mode volume, and near-lossless fiber coupling, with a simple and customizable mode structure enabling full tunability. We study, theoretically and experimentally, nonlinear all-optical switching via the Kerr effect when the resonator is operated in an add-drop configuration. This allows us to optically route a single-wavelength cw optical signal between two fiber ports with high efficiency. Finally, we report on progress towards strong coupling of single rubidium atoms to an ultra-high Q mode of an actively stabilized bottle microresonator.
