English

Controlled coupling of counterpropagating whispering-gallery modes by a single Rayleigh scatterer: a classical problem in a quantum optical light

Quantum Physics 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

We present experiments where a single subwavelength scatterer is used to examine and control the back-scattering induced coupling between counterpropagating high-Q modes of a microsphere resonator. Our measurements reveal the standing wave character of the resulting symmetric and antisymmetric eigenmodes, their unbalanced intensity distributions, and the coherent nature of their coupling. We discuss our findings and the underlying classical physics in the framework common to quantum optics and provide a particularly intuitive explanation of the central processes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0709.3701,
  title  = {Controlled coupling of counterpropagating whispering-gallery modes by a single Rayleigh scatterer: a classical problem in a quantum optical light},
  author = {A. Mazzei and S. Gotzinger and L. de S. Menezes and G. Zumofen and O. Benson and V. Sandoghdar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0709.3701},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

accepted for publication in Pysical Review Letters

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:20:53.788Z