We observed high quality elastic light scattering from a silicon microsphere in the standard telecommunication band. A tunable diode laser was used as the excitation source and a single mode silica optical fiber setup delivered the input laser light to the microsphere. The silicon microsphere was manipulated on the silica optical fiber half coupler (OFHC) to effectively couple the evanescent laser field to the microsphere thus exciting the whispering gallery modes (WGM’s). We observed high quality factor WGM’s which can lead to novel geometries and applications for silicon microsphere based optoelectronic devices, such as filters, modulators, and detectors.

Date Published: 7 May 2013
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 8781, Integrated Optics: Physics and Simulations, 878115 (7 May 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2017118

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8781:
Integrated Optics: Physics and Simulations
Pavel Cheben; Jiří Čtyroký; Iñigo Molina-Fernandez, Editor(s)