Abstract
We report a readily and cheap method to build taper optical fiber-Er3+ doped microsphere platform to investigate upconversion fluorescence emission and down-conversion laser oscillation with low threshold pump power. We demonstrate to dope Er3+ into silica microsphere surface by dipping a single-taper optical fiber into a certain concentration of erbium nitrate solution (Er(NO3)) , then dry it and use the electrical-arc of the optical fiber splicer to melt the tip of taper fiber to form the Er3+-doped silica microsphere due to surface tension induced. We also present a HF acid etching setup to fabricate low loss biconical optical taper fibers. We demonstrate the Er3+ doped silica microsphere triple photons and dual photons absorption process of up-conversion fluorescence emission and down-conversion laser oscillation spectra by using the optical tapered fiber to couple 976 nm/1534 nm pump light source.
Highlights
Rare earth doped materials have been widely used for photonic applications including lasers [1], optical fiber amplifiers [2], and laser display [3], optical anti-counterfeiting [4], and anti-Stokes fluorescence laser cooling [5]
Erbium with abundant energy level structures was studied for erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) [6], optical fiber lasers [1] and up-conversion emissions [7]
In surface-tension induced silica microspheres light can propagate around the inner surface with very low loss due to atomic-scale smooth surface in the manner of total internal reflection, called “whispering-gallery” modes (WGMs)
Summary
Rare earth doped materials have been widely used for photonic applications including lasers [1], optical fiber amplifiers [2], and laser display [3], optical anti-counterfeiting [4], and anti-Stokes fluorescence laser cooling [5]. When silica microspheres are doped with certain number of rare-earth ions, light can be emitted by coupling pump light source with a tapered fiber [15,16]. Microsphere and biconical tapered fiber coupled system is good candidate for study of rare earth doped material light emission. A fiber taper made of SMF-28 fiber by HF etching method was used to couple the pump light with emission light or laser out of the microsphere.
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