Barium fluoride whispering-gallery-mode disk-resonator with one billion quality-factor

Abstract

We demonstrate a monolithic optical whispering gallery mode resonator fabricated with barium fluoride (BaF${}_2$) with an ultra-high quality ($Q$) factor above $10^9$ at $1550$ nm, and measured with both the linewidth and cavity-ring-down methods. Vertical scanning optical profilometry shows that the root mean square surface roughness of $2$ nm is achieved for our mm-size disk. To the best of our knowledge, we show for the first time that one billion $Q$-factor is achievable by precision polishing in relatively soft crystals with mohs hardness of ~$3$. We show that complex thermo-optical dynamics can take place in these resonators. Beside usual applications in nonlinear optics and microwave photonics, high energy particle scintillation detection utilizing monolithic BaF${}_2$ resonators potentially becomes feasible.

References in corpus (6)

• Temporal solitons in optical microresonators
• Optical combs with a crystalline whispering gallery mode resonator
• Brillouin Lasing with a CaF_2 Whispering Gallery Mode Resonator
• Naturally-phasematched second harmonic generation in a whispering gallery mode resonator
• Whispering gallery mode resonator based ultra-narrow linewidth external cavity semiconductor laser
• Thermal bistability-based method for real-time optimization of ultralow-threshold whispering gallery mode microlasers

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Harnessing optical micro-combs for microwave photonics
• Applications of integrated optical microcombs
• Quantum Dynamics of Kerr Optical Frequency Combs below and above Threshold: Spontaneous Four-Wave-Mixing, Entanglement and Squeezed States of Light
• Recent Advances in Laser Self-Injection Locking to High-$Q$ Microresonators
• Mid-Infrared ultra-high-Q resonators based on fluoride crystalline materials
• Optimization of laser stabilization via self-injection locking to WGM microresonator
• Cascaded Brillouin lasing in monolithic barium fluoride whispering gallery mode resonators
• On the dispersion management of fluorite whispering-gallery mode resonators for Kerr optical frequency comb generation in the telecom and mid-infrared range
• Microresonator and Laser Parameters Definition via Self-Injection Locking
• Existence and Switching Behavior of Bright and Dark Kerr Solitons in Whispering-Gallery Mode Resonators with Zero Group-Velocity Dispersion
• Optical microcombs in whispering gallery mode crystalline resonators with dispersive intermode interactions
• Hybrid coupling optomechanically assisted nonreciprocal photon blockade