High-Q microsphere resonators for angular velocity sensing in gyroscopes

Abstract

A resonator gyroscope based on the Sagnac effect is proposed using a core unit that is generated by water-hydrogen flame melting. The relationship between the quality factor Q and diameter D is revealed. The Q factor of the spectral lines of the microsphere cavity coupling system, which uses tapered fibers, is found to be 106 or more before packaging with a low refractive curable ultraviolet polymer, although it drops to approximately 105 after packaging. In addition, a rotating test platform is built, and the transmission spectrum and discriminator curves of a microsphere cavity with Q of 3.22×106 are measured using a semiconductor laser (linewidth less than 1 kHz) and a real-time proportional-integral circuit tracking and feedback technique. Equations fitting the relation between the voltage and angular rotation rate are obtained. According to the experimentally measured parameters, the sensitivity of the microsphere-coupled system can reach 0.095∘/s.

Optical Ring Resonators: A Platform for Biological Sensing Applications

“…On the other hand, fabrication of these devices is not repeatable due to lack of a standard fabrication method. In addition, to couple light into the cavity tapered optical fibers is used,[ 13 14 ] which makes integration of this kind of microresonators more difficult. As a result, these devices are not suitable to develop commercialized photonic-based biosensors.…”

Fabrication and spectral characterizations of high Q asymmetric resonant cavities

“…Due to high Q and minimal mode volume, as well as simple construction techniques and easy integration, Whispering Gallery Mode Resonators (WGMRs) [1] have been attracted for many applications, including optic gyroscopes [2], tunable add-drop filters [3], all-optical switch [4], ultra-low threshold lasers [5][6][7], labelfree detection [8][9][10], pressure measurement [11], thermal sensing [12], etc. A variety of rotationally symmetric WGMR with high Qvalue have been fabricated, including microsphere [13], microdisk [14], microtoroid [15], and microtubular [16].…”

Whispering-gallery modes observed in elastic scattering from submerged high-refractive-index silica microspheres

“…1 Since then, optical microresonators have found many applications in photonics. 2 Microspheres 3,4 with whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) 5 with large quality-factors (Q-factors) 6 coupled to optical waveguides 7 have found applications in optical fiber communication and sensing 8 as microlasers, 9 channel-dropping filters, 10 optical switches, 11,12 tunable filters, 13 Raman lasers, 14 rotation sensors, 15 and biosensors. 16 In addition to dielectric spheres, semiconductor, e.g., silicon, microspheres have been used in channel dropping 17 and considered for optoelectronic applications.…”