Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 57: Photonik I

Q 57.6: Talk

Friday, March 6, 2009, 11:45–12:00, Audi-A

Nonlinear optics and interferometric sensing with subwavelength-diameter optical fibres — •Dimitri Pritzkau, Ulrich Wiedemann, Konstantin Karapetyan, Wolfgang Alt, and Dieter Meschede — nstitut für Angewandte Physik, Wegelerstr. 8, 53115 Bonn

We report on the progress of our project aimed on investigation of subwavelength-diameter optical fibres application for non-linear optics as well as molecule detection and manipulation. A subwavelength-diameter fibre is manufactured from a commercial optical fibre by flame- heating and stretching in a specially built fibre pulling machine. We are using fibres with the waist of about 500 nm diameter and several millimeters length. Due to the subwavelength diameter, more than half of the electromagnetic field of the guided light propagates outside the fibre, in the evanescent wave. For the investigation of non-linear effects, a Ti:Sa laser tunable between 850 and 1020 nm and operating in both mode-locked and CW modes is used.

Previous experiments have demonstrated the possibility of third-harmonic generation using the non-linearity of the silica fibre itself. However, efficiency of just 10⁻⁶ has been obtained so far. Our goal is to achieve highly efficient third-harmonic generation by interaction of the evanescent field with dense caesium vapour. A different application of interest is the dispersive detection of surface-adsorbed molecules using a dual-mode in-fibre Mach-Zehnder interferometer.

The current status of our research as well as the analysis of self-phase modulation recently observed in our lab will be presented.