Abstract
We experimentally demonstrate a compact optical amplifier consisting of a rare-earth-doped whispering-gallery-mode microsphere coupled via a tapered fiber. A gain up to 20 dB is reported in an erbium-doped fluoride glass microsphere 135 μm in diameter. Below the amplification regime, the optical gain is used to compensate for unavoidable losses due to surface contamination or scattering. Quality factor as high as has been measured by analyzing the transient response of the microsphere excited by a dynamically shifted frequency input signal.
© 2012 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Kouki Totsuka and Makoto Tomita
Opt. Lett. 32(21) 3197-3199 (2007)
Luciano Mescia, Pietro Bia, Marco De Sario, Annalisa Di Tommaso, and Francesco Prudenzano
Opt. Express 20(7) 7616-7629 (2012)
Pengfei Wang, Timothy Lee, Ming Ding, Anirban Dhar, Thomas Hawkins, Paul Foy, Yuliya Semenova, Qiang Wu, Jayanta Sahu, Gerald Farrell, John Ballato, and Gilberto Brambilla
Opt. Lett. 37(4) 728-730 (2012)