Raman lasing and Fano lineshapes in a packaged fiber-coupled whispering-gallery-mode microresonator

We report Raman lasing and the optical analog of electromagnetically-induced-transparency(EIT) in a whispering-gallery-mode(WGM) microtoroid resonator embedded in a low refractive index polymer matrix together with a tapered fiber coupler. The microtoroid resonator supports both single mode and multimode Raman lasing with low power thresholds. Observations of Fano and EIT-like phenomena in a packaged microresonator will enable high resolution sensors and can be used in networks where slow-light effect is needed. These results will open up new possibilities for portable, robust, and stable WGM microlasers and resonator-based sensors for applications in various environments.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering on dielectric microspheres with whispering gallery mode resonance

Conventionally, metallic nanostructures are used for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy(SERS), but recently there has been increasing interest in the enhancement of Raman scattering from dielectric substrates due to their improved stability and biocompatibility compared with metallic substrates. Here, we report the observation of enhanced Raman scattering from rhodamine 6 G molecules coated on silica microspheres. We excite the whispering gallery modes(WGMs) supported in the microspheres with a tapered fiber coupler for efficient WGM excitation, and the Raman enhancement can be attributed to the WGM mechanism. Strong resonance enhancement in pump laser intensity and modified Raman emission from the Purcell effect in the microsphere resonator are observed from the experiment and compared with theoretical results. A total Raman enhancement factor of 1.4 × 10~4 is observed, with contribution mostly from the enhancement in pump laser intensity. Our results show that, with an efficient pumping scheme, dielectric microspheres are a viable alternative to metallic SERS substrates.

Parity-time-symmetric whispering-gallery mode nanoparticle sensor[Invited]

We present a study of single nanoparticle detection using parity-time(PT) symmetric whispering-gallery mode(WGM) resonators. Our theoretical model and numerical simulations show that, with balanced gain and loss, the PT-symmetric WGM nanoparticle sensor, tailored to operate at PT phase transition points(also called exceptional points), exhibits significant enhancement in frequency splitting when compared with a single WGM nanoparticle sensor subject to the same perturbation. The presence of gain in the PT-symmetric system leads to narrower linewidth, which helps to resolve smaller changes in frequency splitting and improve the detection limit of nanoparticle sensing. Furthermore, we also provide a general method for detecting multiple nanoparticles entering the mode volume of a PT-symmetric WGM sensor one by one. Our study shows the feasibility of PT-symmetric WGM resonators for ultrasensitive single nanoparticle and biomolecule sensing.