Physical Review A

Enhanced optical nonlinearity and fiber-optical frequency comb controlled by a single atom in a whispering-gallery-mode microtoroid resonator

Jiahua Li, Suzhen Zhang, Rong Yu, Duo Zhang, Ying Wu

Published Nov 17, 2014• 33 citations

Abstract

Based on a single atom coupled to a fiber-coupled, chip-based microresonator [B. Dayan et al., Science 319, 1062 (2008)], we put forward a scheme to generate optical frequency combs at driving laser powers as low as a few nanowatts. Using state-of-the-art experimental parameters, we investigate in detail the influences of different atomic positions and taper-resonator coupling regimes on optical-frequency-comb generation. In addition to numerical simulations demonstrating this effect, a physical explanation of the underlying mechanism is presented. We find that the combination of the atom and the resonator can induce a large third-order nonlinearity which is significantly stronger than Kerr nonlinearity in Kerr frequency combs. Such enhanced nonlinearity can be used to generate optical frequency combs if driven with two continuous-wave control and probe lasers and significantly reduce the threshold of nonlinear optical processes. The comb spacing can be well tuned by changing the frequency beating between the driving control and probe lasers. The proposed method is versatile and can be adopted to different types of resonators, such as microdisks, microspheres, microtoroids or microrings.

DOI: 10.1103/physreva.90.053832

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