Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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KFM: Fachverband Kristalline Festkörper und deren Mikrostruktur

KFM 7: Whispering-Gallery-Mode Resonators

KFM 7.2: Talk

Tuesday, March 17, 2020, 14:20–14:40, TOE 317

Flexible Photonics based on Whispering-Gallery-Mode Resonators and Liquid-Crystal-Elastomers — •Simon Woska, Osman Karayel, Pascal Rietz, Roman Oberle, Jannis Hessenauer, Evelyn Kaiser, Stefan Pfleging, Carolin Klusmann, Tobias Siegle, and Heinz Kalt — Institute of Applied Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany

Whispering-Gallery-Mode (WGM) resonators confine light due to total internal reflection at their outer rim and feature both high quality factors and low mode volumes. Therefore, they hold huge potential as building blocks for photonic devices or for investigation of topological properties. Many of these applications require a precise tunability of the resonant wavelengths and/or the inter-cavity distance between several resonators. Meeting these requirements, flexible photonics come into play. We include Liquid Crystal Elastomers (LCEs) into our polymeric building blocks in order to exploit their directional, temperature-responsive, and reversible mechanical actuation. Thereby, we are able to tune the optical properties of our systems by precisely controlling their dimensions using temperature as an external stimulus.

In this contribution, we address two different systems: On the one hand, we introduce a pair of rigid WGM resonators mounted on an LCE substrate and show first results of reversible temperature-induced coupling. On the other hand, we present detailed investigations on fully tunable flexible WGM resonators. To this end, the cavities are entirely made from LCE. Hereby, also the effect of the birefringence of LCE on the temperature dependency of different WGMs is discussed.