All-Optical Switching and Strong Coupling Using Tunable Whispering-Gallery-Mode Resonators

01.01.2008 - 30.06.2011

Forschungsförderungsprojekt

All-optical switching is a long-standing goal of photonics. The manipulation of light with light is in general possible via the non- linear optical response of matter. The effect of this non- linear light–matter interaction can be amplified be means of optical resonators. This amplification becomes higher the smaller the mode volume V and the higher the Q factor of the resonator are. While a number of resonator concepts exist that offer high values of Q / V, coupling of light into and out of high Q resonators is often inefficient. The situation is different for high-Q whispering- gallery- mode resonators, where tapered fiber coupling allows coupling efficiencies exceeding 99 %. We propose the use of the tunable whispering- gallerymode resonators that have been developed during the first funding period of this research unit for such all-optical switching applications. The experiments shall on the one hand be carried out using the “bulk” non- linear response of surface-adsorbed molecules that interact with the evanescent field of the resonator modes. On the other hand, we seek to carry out experiments that exploit the non- linear response of single atoms in the so-called “strong coupling regime”. This approach is motivated by the perspective of realizing a non- linear interaction at the level of single photons. If such a photon–photon interaction could be realized in the strong coupling regime, this would open the route towards important applications in the framework of quantum communication and quantum information processing.

Personen

Projektleiter_in

Arno Rauschenbeutel (E141)

Projektmitarbeiter_innen

Danny O'Shea (E141)

Institut

E141 - Atominstitut

Förderungmittel

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft e.V (EU) Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Schlagwörter

Deutsch	Englisch
Optische Nanofasern	Optical Nanofibers
Licht-Materie Wechselwirkung	Light-Matter Interaction
Optische Mikroresonatoren	Optical Microresonators
Optisches Schalten	All-Optical Switching

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