All-Optical Control of an Individual Resonance in a Silicon Microresonator

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate selective control of the Q and transmission of an individual resonance of an optical microcavity by optically controlling its intracavity loss via inverse Raman scattering. A strongly overcoupled resonance is brought into critical coupling with continuous tuning of the on-resonance transmission by >9 dB and reduction of the intrinsic Q factor by more than a factor of five. Adjacent resonances experience minimal disturbance and can be selectively controlled by tuning the control beam to the appropriate control resonance. These dynamics are analogous to Zeno effects observed in decoherence-driven atomic ensembles and two-level systems.