Longitudinal whispering-gallery modes in metal microcavities

Longitudinal waves in microcavities emerging because of spatial dispersion are investigated. It is shown that longitudinal modes similar to whispering-gallery modes exist in microcavities of this kind. These longitudinal modes should exist in metal microcavities in the vicinity of the plasma frequency.     

Optomechanical dynamics in detuned whispering-gallery modes cavity

The dynamics of a microresonator in detuned whispering-gallery modes (WGM) cavity opto-mechanical system are investigated by the quantum Langevin equation. A WGM cavity coupling to two parallel waveguides is devised to study the transmission and reflection of this system. In single mode WGM cavity, without optomechanical coupling, both the transmission and reflection of the cavity present a Lorentzian dip and peak. When the coupling between the cavity mode and mechanical mode is considered, the transmission and reflection of the optomechanical cavity show “W” and “M” shape mode splitting. Moreover, under the action of a controlling and a probe laser, the output field at the probe frequency presents electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT)-like spectrum in the system. We give the physical origin of EIT-like and the pump-probe response for the WGM shares all the features of the Λ system in atoms. Further, due to backscattering, the two traveling waves in WGM are coupled with a rate γ. The transmission and reflection of the optomechanical cavity display three modes splitting in the spectra with optomechanical coupling between the two cavity modes and the mechanical mode.     

Nonlinear whispering-gallery modes in a microellipse cavity

We study theoretically the effect of deformed microelliptical cavities on lasing characteristics. We show that the transition of stationary lasing states from unidirectional rotational waves to a mixture of clockwise and anticlockwise rotational waves occurs when the shape of a disk is deformed to that of an ellipse.     

Time-domain pulse property of stimulated Raman scattering in a multimode optical fiber

The time-domain pulse property of quasi-steady stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in a multimode optical fiber, pumped by an A-O Q-switched Nd: YAG laser, is studied both experimentally and theoretically. Good agreement has been achieved between theory and experiment. Discussion shows that the variation of the Stokes pulse width (FWHM)t _s depends on the shape of input pump pulse.     

Femtosecond pulse propagation and optical solitons in semiconductor-doped glass waveguides in the vicinity of a two-photon resonance

The propagation of ultrashort optical pulses in semiconductor-doped glass waveguides is investigated theoretically for wavelengths below the half bandgap. The linear and non-linear properties of the composites are obtained and a field equation for pulse propagation is derived. This equation yields a new family of sub-picosecond optical solitons which are observed in numerical simulations. Interesting applications are anticipated for ultrafast all-optical signal processing. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Excitation and interrogation of whispering-gallery modes in optical microresonators using a single fused-tapered fiber tip

We show that whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) in optical microresonators can be excited and detected using a fused-tapered fiber tip (FTFT). The fabrication of FTFTs is simple and inexpensive; they are robust and allow the excitation and interrogation of the resonances with a single fiber. Excitation of high-Q WGMs in silica microcylinders and microspheres is demonstrated.     

Chirped optical pulse propagation in saturating nonlinear media

Using a variational method, we have investigated the propagation characteristics of a chirped optical pulse in anomalously dispersive media possessing saturating nonlinearity. For the special case of uniform loss less media, the dynamics of the temporal width of the pulse is shown to be equivalent to an oscillator of unit mass which is executing its motion under some effective potential well. The potential is examined and four different types of behavior of the pulse width are noticed. The role of saturation parameter and the initial chirp in determining the propagation characteristics have been examined. It is found that, both high value of chirp and saturation are detrimental to stable pulse propagation. Particularly, the effect of chirp becomes severe with the increase in the value of saturation. We have shown that incorporation of saturation in the nonlinearity leads to the existence of bistable soliton. For the case of a lossy medium, net broadening of width takes place over many cycles of oscillation. The net broadening decreases with the increase in the value of saturation.     

Spatio-temporal pulse propagation in nonlinear dispersive optical media

We discuss state-of-art approaches to modeling of propagation of ultrashort optical pulses in one and three spatial dimensions. We operate with the analytic signal formulation for the electric field rather than using the slowly varying envelope approximation, because the latter becomes questionable for few-cycle pulses. Suitable propagation models are naturally derived in terms of unidirectional approximation.     

Pigtailing the high-Q microsphere cavity: a simple fiber coupler for optical whispering-gallery modes

We demonstrate a simple method for efficient coupling of standard single-mode optical fibers to a high- Q optical microsphere cavity. Phase-matched excitation of whispering-gallery modes is provided by an angle-polished fiber tip in which the core-guided wave undergoes total internal reflection. In the experimental setup, which included a microsphere with both an input and an output coupler, the total fiber-to-fiber transmission at resonance reached 23% (total insertion loss, 6.3 dB), with loaded quality factor Q>/=3x10(7) and unloaded Q approximately 1.2x10(8) at 1550 nm. A simple pigtailing method for microspheres permits their wider use in fiber optics and photonics devices.     

An improved nonlinear optical pulse propagation equation

A new equation for self-focusing of extremely focused short-duration intense pulses is derived using a method that treats diffraction and dispersion to all orders with nonlinearity present, and self-consistently determines the nonlinear derivative terms present in the propagation equation. It generalizes both the previous formulation of linear optical pulse propagation to the nonlinear regime, and the cw nonlinear regime propagation to the pulsed regime by including temporal characteristics of the pulse. We apply the new equation and propagate a tightly focused picosecond pulse in silica and explicitly show the effects of spatial-derivative nonlinear coupling terms.     

Towards observation of sub-diffractive pulse propagation in photonic crystals

It is shown that sub-diffractive (self-collimating) propagation of ultrashort pulses of narrow light beams is possible in two dimensional planar photonic crystal slabs (in particular made with air holes in Si₃N₄ slab) where the sub-diffractive propagation of monochromatic beam of visible light has been demonstrated previously both theoretically and numerically. We found that the sub-diffractive propagations of the pulses of duration of more than 40 fs are indistinguishable from that of monochromatic beams. However, for the pulses with duration less than 40 fs their propagation peculiarities associated with asymmetric spatiotemporal misshaping, spatial and temporal broadening come into play. The effects are pronounced for the pulses of duration less than 20 fs. The phenomena are shown for both TM and TE polarized light by means of numerical integration of 2D Maxwell’s equations with finite-difference time-domain technique.     

光脉冲在激光放大介质中的非线性传播

 在考虑了激光放大介质中基质的克尔非线性效应和群速度色散以及活性粒子的增益分布后，导出了光脉冲在激光放大介质中传播的基本方程。并在光脉冲中心频率与介质增益峰值频率时重合时，对皮秒超高斯光脉冲在钕玻璃激光放大介质中传播的脉冲形状进行了分析讨论。     

Adaptive control of femtosecond pulse propagation in optical fibers

Nonlinear effects present fundamental obstacles to the propagation of femtosecond pulses of detectable energy in single-mode optical fibers, inducing severe distortion even after a very short (a few meters) propagation distance. We show here that adaptive pulse shaping can overcome these limitations by synthesizing pulses that are self-correcting for higher-order nonlinear effects when they are launched in the fiber. This approach would not only affect optical communications but also yield benefits in various disciplines requiring optimized fiber-based femtosecond pulse delivery, for example, nonlinear imaging techniques such as multiphoton microscopy, material processing, and medical diagnostics.     

光脉冲在激光放大介质中的非线性传播

在考虑了激光放大介质中基质的克尔非线性效应和群速度色散以及活性粒子的增益分布后,导出了光脉冲在激光放大介质中传播的基本方程。并在光脉冲中心频率与介质增益峰值频率时重合时,对皮秒超高斯光脉冲在钕玻璃激光放大介质中传播的脉冲形状进行了分析讨论。     

High-Q exterior whispering-gallery modes in a metal-coated microresonator

We propose a kind of plasmonic whispering-gallery mode highly localized on the exterior surface of a metal-coated microresonator. This exterior (EX) surface mode possesses high quality factors at room temperature, and can be efficiently excited by a tapered fiber. The EX mode can couple to an interior (IN) mode and this coupling produces a strong anticrossing behavior, which not only allows conversion of IN to EX modes, but also forms a long-lived antisymmetric mode. As a potential application, the EX mode could be used for a biosensor with a sensitivity high of up to 500 nm per refraction index unit, a large figure of merit, and a wide detection range.     

Shift of whispering-gallery modes in microspheres by protein adsorption

Biosensors based on the shift of whispering-gallery modes in microspheres accompanying protein adsorption are described by use of a perturbation theory. For random spatial adsorption, theory predicts that the shift should be inversely proportional to microsphere radius R and proportional to protein surface density and excess polarizability. Measurements are found to be consistent with the theory, and the correspondence enables the average surface area occupied by a single protein to be estimated. These results are consistent with crystallographic data for bovine serum albumin. The theoretical shift for adsorption of a single protein is found to be extremely sensitive to the target region, with adsorption in the most sensitive region varying as 1/R(5/2). Specific parameters for single protein or virus particle detection are predicted.     

Highly efficient optical power transfer to whispering-gallery modes by use of a symmetrical dual-coupling configuration

We report that greater than 99.8% optical power transfer to whispering-gallery modes was achieved in fused-silica microspheres by use of a dual-tapered-fiber coupling method. The intrinsic cavity loss and the taper-to-sphere coupling coefficient are inferred from the experimental data. It is shown that the low intrinsic cavity loss and the symmetrical dual-coupling structure are crucial for obtaining the high coupling efficiency.     

Coupling of whispering-gallery modes in size-mismatched microdisk photonic molecules

Mechanisms of whispering-gallery (WG)-mode coupling in microdisk photonic molecules (PMs) with slight and significant size mismatches are numerically investigated. The results reveal two different scenarios of modes interaction depending on the degree of this mismatch and offer new insight into how PM parameters can be tuned to control and modify WG-mode wavelengths and Q factors. From a practical point of view, these findings offer a way to fabricate PM microlaser structures that exhibit low thresholds and directional emission and at the same time are more tolerant to fabrication errors than previously explored coupled-cavity structures composed of identical microresonators.     

Time-domain split-step method with variable step-sizes in vectorial pulse propagation by using digital filters

Finite impulse response (FIR) and infinite impulse response (IIR) digital filters are proposed to allow for time-domain simulation of optical pulse propagation by using the operator-splitting technique. These filters simulate polarization mode dispersion and chromatic dispersion effects with acceptable accuracy in time-domain. An analytical relation between the coefficients of these filters and the simulation step-size is established to accommodate the possibility of carrying out the time-domain split-step method with variable split-step length at virtually no computational burden. The superiority of the proposed method over the conventional frequency-domain technique is particularly demonstrated in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) applications.