All-Optical Tunable Microlaser Based on an Ultrahigh-Q Erbium-Doped Hybrid Microbottle Cavity

Abstract

An all-optical tunable microlaser based on the ultrahigh-quality (Q)-factor erbium-doped hybrid microbottle cavity is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for the first time. All-optical wavelength tunability of the silica microcavity laser is a very attractive feature and has been rarely reported. By using an improved doping method, the erbium-doped silica microbottle cavity with a Q factor of 5.2 × 107 in the 1550 nm band is obtained, which is higher than the previous work based on the conventional sol–gel method. Through nonresonant pump in the 980 nm band, a lasing threshold of 1.65 mW is achieved, which is lower than all those realized through the same pump method. Besides, iron oxide nanoparticles are coated on the tapered area by doping them in the ultraviolet curing adhesive in order to precisely control the coating area, which enables the hybrid microcavity to maintain the ultrahigh Q factor and possess large tunability. By feeding the control light through the axial direction of the microbottle cavity, the lasing wavelength is all-optically tuned with a range of 4.4 nm, which is larger than the reported doped silica microcavity lasers. This work has great potential in applications such as optical communications, sensing, and spectroscopy.

Controllable Kerr and Raman-Kerr frequency combs in functionalized microsphere resonators

“…The presence of Au is due to the magnetron sputtering process before SEM analysis. We also measure the basic performance of the functionalized microsphere resonator, and a silica microfiber with a diameter of about 3 μm is selected to couple the pump light into the microresonator [30][31][32][33]. The inset of Figure 2C shows the Q factor measurement result, which presents an intrinsic Q factor (Q 0 ) of 2.1 × 10 8 .…”

Lanthanide‐Based Luminescent Materials for Waveguide and Lasing

“…In 2018, Shi and co-workersr eporteda na ll-optical tunable microlaser based on Er 3 + -dopedh ybrid microbottle cavity (Figure 4a-c). [22] Er 3 + ions were doped into the surfaceo ft he silica microbottle cavity,w hile as pherical end coated with iron oxide nanoparticles was attached on the tapered area of the microbottle. By feeding ac ontrol light through the axial direction of the microbottle cavity,t he wavelength of lasing emission was all-optically tuned in ar ange of 4.4 nm.…”

Enhanced 2 µm Mid‐Infrared Laser Output from Tm3+‐Activated Glass Ceramic Microcavities

“…On account of the ultrahigh quality ( Q ) factors (up to 10 10 ) and extremely small mode volumes (on the order of 100 µm 3 ), whispering gallery mode (WGM) optical microcavities have been extensively studied as miniature optoelectronic devices promisingly applicated in sensing, biomedicine, and optical communications. [ 16–19 ] Motivated by the unique properties of WGM microcavity, great endeavors have been devoted to the exploration of optical performance based on the microcavity, [ 20–23 ] and various types of microcavity structures such as microsphere, [ 24 ] microdisk, [ 25 ] microtoroid, [ 26 ] and microbottle [ 27 ] have been developed for extensive applications in optical and photonic systems. As an efficient resonator, WGM microcavity exhibits excellent confinement effect to photons, resulting in enhanced light–matter interactions that enable the achievement of high performance laser output with low pump threshold and high optical‐optical conversion efficiency.…”