Abstract

The combination of a high Q > 10⁹ and small dimensions (down to few tens of micrometers) in glass microspheres¹ makes them an attractive new type of optical resonator for different applications. Because of their strong field confinement, they are proposed for intracavity photon-number measurement by means of material nonlinearity χ⁽³⁾ or dispersive interaction with near-resonant atoms.^1,2

© 1995 Optical Society of America