TY - JOUR
T1 - All-optical tunable buffering with coupled ultra-high Q whispering gallery mode microcavities
AU - Yoshiki, Wataru
AU - Honda, Yoshihiro
AU - Tetsumoto, Tomohiro
AU - Furusawa, Kentaro
AU - Sekine, Norihiko
AU - Tanabe, Takasumi
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16K13702 and a research assistantship of a Grant-in-Aid to the Program for Leading Graduate School for “Science for Development of Super Mature Society” from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science, and Technology in Japan.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Author(s).
PY - 2017/12/1
Y1 - 2017/12/1
N2 - All-optical tunable buffering was recently achieved on a chip by using dynamically tuned coupled mode induced transparency, which is an optical analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency. However, the small Q s of about 105 used in those systems were limiting the maximum buffering time to a few hundred ps. Although employing an ultra-high Q whispering gallery mode (WGM) microcavity can significantly improve the maximum buffering time, the dynamic tuning of the WGM has remained challenging because thermo-optic and pressure tunings, which are widely used for WGM microcavities, have a very slow response. Here we demonstrate all-optical tunable buffering utilizing coupled ultra-high Q WGM cavities and the Kerr effect. The Kerr effect can change the refractive index instantaneously, and this allowed us to tune the WGM cavity very quickly. In addition, from among the various WGM cavities we employed a silica toroid microcavity for our experiments because it has an ultra-high Q factor (>2 × 107) and a small mode volume, and can be fabricated on a chip. Use of the Kerr effect and the silica toroid microcavity enabled us to observe an on-chip all-optical tunable buffering operation and achieve a maximum buffering time of 20 ns.
AB - All-optical tunable buffering was recently achieved on a chip by using dynamically tuned coupled mode induced transparency, which is an optical analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency. However, the small Q s of about 105 used in those systems were limiting the maximum buffering time to a few hundred ps. Although employing an ultra-high Q whispering gallery mode (WGM) microcavity can significantly improve the maximum buffering time, the dynamic tuning of the WGM has remained challenging because thermo-optic and pressure tunings, which are widely used for WGM microcavities, have a very slow response. Here we demonstrate all-optical tunable buffering utilizing coupled ultra-high Q WGM cavities and the Kerr effect. The Kerr effect can change the refractive index instantaneously, and this allowed us to tune the WGM cavity very quickly. In addition, from among the various WGM cavities we employed a silica toroid microcavity for our experiments because it has an ultra-high Q factor (>2 × 107) and a small mode volume, and can be fabricated on a chip. Use of the Kerr effect and the silica toroid microcavity enabled us to observe an on-chip all-optical tunable buffering operation and achieve a maximum buffering time of 20 ns.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41598-017-10035-4
DO - 10.1038/s41598-017-10035-4
M3 - Article
C2 - 28878393
AN - SCOPUS:85028945019
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 7
JO - Scientific reports
JF - Scientific reports
IS - 1
M1 - 10688
ER -