HMC Physics Colloquium

Tuesdays at 16:30 in Shanahan Center for Teaching and Learning, Room B460

Kerry Vahala

Caltech

:mil:`Q` > Million Optical Microresonators on Silicon Chips

Sept. 13, 2005

A novel laser processing method has been applied to create optical micro-resonators having Q factors as high as 500 million on silicon wafers. The combination of Ultra-high-Q and small mode volume opens up new applications for wafer based resonators. In this talk I will first review the processing and passive optical properties of these devices and then describe their application to demonstrate micro Raman and micro OPOs on a chip as well as rare-earth-doped lasers on silicon. Finally, recent results concerning the observation of radiation-pressure-driven micro-mechanical oscillation at RF rates in these structures will be described.