We fabricate slightly deformed fused-silica microspheres in which whispering gallery modes possess remarkably directional escape emission from the microsphere boundary. With efficient free-space excitation and collection, the lateral spatial distribution of whispering gallery modes with different azimuthal mode numbers, m, is directly observed through modal coupling and directional emission. Ex...

We are developing high quality factor whispering gallery mode resonator (WGMR) disks for use in quantum information experiments. Our polished lithium niobate disks achieved a quality factor on the order of 10. We report the use of Type-I noncritical phase matching in a lithium niobate whispering gallery mode resonator disk to produce optical second harmonic generation at λ = 532nm. This process...

We report a theoretical study showing that rogue waves can emerge in whispering-gallery-mode resonators as the result of the chaotic interplay between Kerr nonlinearity and anomalous group-velocity dispersion. The nonlinear dynamics of the propagation of light in a whispering-gallery-mode resonator is investigated using the Lugiato-Lefever equation, and we give evidence of a range of parameters...

Whispering gallery mode microdisk cavities fabricated by direct laser writing are studied using dark-field imaging and spectroscopy in the visible spectral range. Dark-field imaging allows us to directly visualize the spatial intensity distribution of whispering gallery modes. We extract their azimuthal and radial mode indices from dark-field images, and find the axial mode number from the disp...

We introduce ring lasers with continuous π-phase shifts in the second order distributed feedback grating. This configuration facilitates insights into the nature of the modal outcoupling in an optical cavity. The grating exploits the asymmetry of whispering gallery modes and induces a rotation of the far field pattern. We find that this rotation can be connected to the location of the mode rela...

A new microlaser design based on the high-reflectivity whispering-gallery modes around the edge of a thin semiconductor microdisk is described and initial experimental results are presented. Optical confinement within the thin disk plane results in a microresonator with potential for single-mode, ultralow threshold lasers. Initial experiments use selective etching techniques in the InP/InGaAsP ...

Interfacial Tension In article number 2100129, Gregor Pirnat and Matjaž Humar demonstrate a simple, fast, very precise technique to measure time dependent interfacial tension between two immiscible liquids based on whispering gallery modes in micrometer droplets. The optical enable measurements of the droplet size as well refractive index one fluids.

Whispering-Gallery mode based optical micro-devices have been demonstrated to have extremely high sensitivity to changes in local temperature owing to their high quality factors and frequency-based measurements. In this paper, we first examine different fabrication techniques for integrating whispering-gallery mode sensors directly onto heating components to realize on-chip in-situ dynamic temp...

We review recent advances in the application of dielectric whispering-gallery (WG) resonators in optics and photonics, tracing the growth of the technology from the experiments with freely flying spherical droplets of transparent liquids to integrated on-chip microresonators. Both passive (such as filters) and active (such as lasers) whispering-gallery-mode (WGM)-based devices are discussed. Pr...

Doppler cooling the center-of-mass motion of an optically levitated microsphere via the velocity-dependent scattering force from narrow whispering gallery mode resonances is described. Light that is red detuned from the whispering gallery mode resonance can be used to damp the center-of-mass motion in a process analogous to the Doppler cooling of atoms. The scattering force is not limited by sa...