3,170 research outputs found
Theoretical and experimental study of stimulated and cascaded Raman scattering in ultra-high-Q optical microcavities
Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in ultra-high-Q surface-tension-induced
spherical and chip-based toroid microcavities is considered both theoretically
and experimentally. These microcavities are fabricated from silica, exhibit
small mode volume (typically 1000 ) and possess whispering-gallery
type modes with long photon storage times (in the range of 100 ns),
significantly reducing the threshold for stimulated nonlinear optical
phenomena. Oscillation threshold levels of less than 100 % -Watts of
launched fiber pump power, in microcavities with quality factors of 100 million
are observed. Using a steady state analysis of the coupled-mode equations for
the pump and Raman whispering-gallery modes, the threshold, efficiencies and
cascading properties of SRS in UHQ devices are derived. The results are
experimentally confirmed in the telecommunication band (1550nm) using tapered
optical fibers as highly efficient waveguide coupling elements for both pumping
and signal extraction. The device performance dependence on coupling, quality
factor and modal volume are measured and found to be in good agreement with
theory. This includes analysis of the threshold and efficiency for cascaded
Raman scattering. The side-by-side study of nonlinear oscillation in both
spherical microcavities and toroid microcavities on-a-chip also allows for
comparison of their properties. In addition to the benefits of a wafer-scale
geometry, including integration with optical, electrical or mechanical
functionality, microtoroids on-a-chip exhibit single mode Raman oscillation
over a wide range of pump powers.Comment: 12 pages, 15 figure
Optical Nanofibers: a new platform for quantum optics
The development of optical nanofibers (ONF) and the study and control of
their optical properties when coupling atoms to their electromagnetic modes has
opened new possibilities for their use in quantum optics and quantum
information science. These ONFs offer tight optical mode confinement (less than
the wavelength of light) and diffraction-free propagation. The small cross
section of the transverse field allows probing of linear and non-linear
spectroscopic features of atoms with exquisitely low power. The cooperativity
-- the figure of merit in many quantum optics and quantum information systems
-- tends to be large even for a single atom in the mode of an ONF, as it is
proportional to the ratio of the atomic cross section to the electromagnetic
mode cross section. ONFs offer a natural bus for information and for
inter-atomic coupling through the tightly-confined modes, which opens the
possibility of one-dimensional many-body physics and interesting quantum
interconnection applications. The presence of the ONF modifies the vacuum
field, affecting the spontaneous emission rates of atoms in its vicinity. The
high gradients in the radial intensity naturally provide the potential for
trapping atoms around the ONF, allowing the creation of one-dimensional arrays
of atoms. The same radial gradient in the transverse direction of the field is
responsible for the existence of a large longitudinal component that introduces
the possibility of spin-orbit coupling of the light and the atom, enabling the
exploration of chiral quantum optics.Comment: 65 pages, to appear in Advances in Atomic, Molecular and Optical
Physic
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Stabilized large mode area in tapered photonic crystal fiber for stable coupling
A rigorous modal solution approach based on the numerically efficient finite element method (FEM) has been used to design a tapered photonic crystal fiber with a large mode area that could be efficiently coupled to an optical fiber. Here, for the first time, we report that the expanded mode area can be stabilized against possible fabrication tolerances by introducing a secondary surrounding waveguide with larger air holes in the outer ring. A full-vectorial -field approach is employed to obtain mode field areas along the tapered section, and the Least Squares Boundary Residual (LSBR) method is used to obtain the coupling coefficients to a butt-coupled fiber
Mode Transforming Properties of Tapered Single-Mode Fiber Microlenses
The Gaussian approximation that is typically used to estimate single-mode fiber microlens performance is investigated. It is applied to hemispheric lenses on two types of tapered single-mode fiber. Theoretical and experimental results are compared. The first type of taper, which is fabricated by pulling a fiber while it is melted, has a tapered core and a tapered cladding. The second type of taper, which is fabricated by etching the cladding, has a tapered cladding only. For a tapered-core fiber, coupling to the cladding-guided modes and the finite radius of curvature of the wave front before the lens must be considered to predict the lens spot size accurately, whereas the spot size of a tapered-cladding lens can be predicted from the lens diameter alone. Thus the spot size of a lens on a tapered-cladding fiber is easier to predict and control than that of a lens on a tapered-core fiber. It is also shown that the usual theory used to predict the spot size gives accepted values for tapered-cladding lenses but not for tapered-core lenses
Ultrafast, low-power, all-optical switching via birefringent phase-matched transverse mode conversion in integrated waveguides
We demonstrate the potential of birefringence-based, all-optical, ultrafast
conversion between the transverse modes in integrated optical waveguides by
modelling the conversion process by numerically solving the multi-mode coupled
nonlinear Schroedinger equations. The observed conversion is induced by a
control beam and due to the Kerr effect, resulting in a transient index grating
which coherently scatters probe light from one transverse waveguide mode into
another. We introduce birefringent phase matching to enable efficient
all-optically induced mode conversion at different wavelengths of the control
and probe beam. It is shown that tailoring the waveguide geometry can be
exploited to explicitly minimize intermodal group delay as well as to maximize
the nonlinear coefficient, under the constraint of a phase matching condition.
The waveguide geometries investigated here, allow for mode conversion with over
two orders of magnitude reduced control pulse energy compared to previous
schemes and thereby promise nonlinear mode switching exceeding efficiencies of
90% at switching energies below 1 nJ
Fabrication and coupling to planar high-Q silica disk microcavities
Using standard lithographic techniques, we demonstrate fabrication of silica disk microcavities, which exhibit whispering-gallery-type modes having quality factors (Q) in excess of 1 million. Efficient coupling (high extinction at critical coupling and low, nonresonant insertion loss) to and from the disk structure is achieved by the use of tapered optical fibers. The observed high Q is attributed to the wedged-shaped edge of the disk microcavity, which is believed to isolate modes from the disk perimeter and thereby reduce scattering loss. The mode spectrum is measured and the influence of planar confinement on the mode structure is investigated. We analyze the use of these resonators for very low loss devices, such as add/drop filters
Perturbative analytic theory of an ultrahigh-Q toroidal microcavity
A perturbation theoretic approach is proposed as an efficient characterization tool for a tapered fiber coupled ultrahigh-quality factor (Q) toroidal microcavity with a small inverse aspect ratio. The Helmholtz equation with an assumption of quasi-TE/TM modes in local toroidal coordinates is solved via a power series expansion in terms of the inverse aspect ratio and the expanded eigenmode solutions are further manipulated iteratively to generate various characteristic metrics of the ultrahigh-Q toroidal microcavity coupled to a tapered fiber waveguide. Resonance wavelengths, free spectral ranges, cavity mode volumes, phase-matching conditions, and radiative Q factors are derived along with a mode characterization given by a characteristic equation. Calculated results are in excellent agreement with full vectorial finite-element simulations. The results are useful as a shortcut to avoid full numerical simulation, and also render intuitive insight into the modal properties of toroidal microcavities
Efficient Photon Coupling from a Diamond Nitrogen Vacancy Centre by Integration with Silica Fibre
A central goal in quantum information science is to efficiently interface
photons with single optical modes for quantum networking and distributed
quantum computing. Here, we introduce and experimentally demonstrate a compact
and efficient method for the low-loss coupling of a solid-state qubit, the
nitrogen vacancy (NV) centre in diamond, with a single-mode optical fibre. In
this approach, single-mode tapered diamond waveguides containing exactly one
high quality NV memory are selected and integrated on tapered silica fibres.
Numerical optimization of an adiabatic coupler indicates that
near-unity-efficiency photon transfer is possible between the two modes.
Experimentally, we find an overall collection efficiency between 18-40 % and
observe a raw single photon count rate above 700 kHz. This integrated system
enables robust, alignment-free, and efficient interfacing of single-mode
optical fibres with single photon emitters and quantum memories in solids
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