Localization of light induced by pulling a fiber

Optical microresonators based on whispering gallery modes (WGM) can be potentially used in many areas of science and technology including telecommunications, microfluidics, optomechanics, and others. They are dielectric convex structures that confine light through total internal reflection. Out of the many available types of WGM microresonators, the surface nanoscale axial photonics (SNAP) platform enables fabrication of resonant ultralow loss photonics structures at the surface of an optical fiber. Due to their flexibility, and ultra-low loss, which lead to the creation of high-quality WGMs, they have great potential applications as photonic micro-devices in switching, slowing light, filtering, lasing and sensing with high precision.
In this work, we propose a new technique for the creation of SNAPs, by using a regular hydrogen-oxygen torch, which requires less equipment than current techniques. We characterize our resonator by evanescent spectroscopy using a tapered fiber for coupling. The transmission spectra shows that light can be fully localized by pulling a fiber, with the potential to host very low loss resonant modes.