Dispersion tailoring of a crystalline whispering gallery mode microcavity for a wide-spanning optical Kerr frequency comb

Abstract

We fabricated a crystalline whispering gallery mode microcavity by using a computer-controlled ultraprecision cutting process to control the cavity cross section. We used a numerical simulation to show that a wide-spanning optical Kerr frequency comb is generated by tailoring the dispersion of a crystalline whispering gallery mode microcavity. To control the dispersion, we designed the cross-sectional shape of the device and fabricated it by using ultraprecision cutting. Both the measured value and the numerical result show that the microcavity has an anomalous dispersion over one octave.