Publication No: 5117

Lead silicate glass microsphere resonators with absorption-limited Q

Pengfei Wang^1,2, Ganapathy Senthil Murugan¹, Timothy Lee¹, Xian Feng¹, Yuliya Semenova², Qiang Wu², Wei Loh¹, Gilberto Brambilla¹, James S.Wilkinson¹ and Gerald Farrell²

1. Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, UK
2. Photonics Research Centre, Dublin Institute of Technology, Kevin Street, Dublin 8, Ireland

Abstract

We report the fabrication and characterization of a lead-silicate glass microsphere resonator. We show that at the wavelengths near 1555 nm high Q modes can be efficiently excited from a 109 μm diameter lead-silicate glass microsphere via evanescent coupling using a tapered silica fiber with a waist diameter of 2 μm. Resonances with Q-factors as high as 0.9 x 10⁷ were observed. This is very close to the theoretical material-limited Q-factor and is the highest Q-factor reported so far from a nonlinear glass microsphere.

Applied Physics Letters (2011) Vol.98(18) pp.181105

doi: 10.1063/1.3586771

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