Jonathan Demaimay | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Yellow whispering-gallery-mode lasing from amorphous fluoride microspheres

Compact, low-noise coherent light sources in the visible remain challenging due to limited gain platforms and inefficient pumping. We report a new route to visible microlasing based on direct, one-photon blue pumping and an amorphous fluoride gain material platform. Dysprosium doped fluoride microspheres are fabricated via plasma-torch-induced, pressureless amorphization of single crystals, enabling compositions beyond conventional glass-forming limits while ensuring ultrasmooth morphology, low phonon energy, and homogeneous dopant distribution. We demonstrate the first fiber-coupled whispering-gallery-mode lasing from an amorphous fluoride microsphere in the yellow (573 nm), with an ultralow threshold of $190 \mu$W despite spin-forbidden Dy$^{3+}$ transitions. Lasing is evidenced by characteristic light-light curve indicating a low spontaneous emission factor, narrow-linewidth emission, and relaxation oscillations yielding a loaded quality factor of $Q = 3.5 \times 10^6$. This platform is readily extendable to other rare-earth emitters, enabling entire visible spectral coverage beyond the limitations of upconversion pumping, with prospects for color-tunable and white-light emission. Finally, fiber-based amplification of the WGM signal demonstrates a pathway toward compact, fiber-integrated visible microlasers with controllable noise and linewidth.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Yellow stimulated emission from Dy$^{3+}$-doped silica glass microspheres

Dy$^{3+}$-doped silica glass whispering gallery mode microspheres are fabricated by fiber fusion splicing. They present an almost ideal spherical morphology with a radius ranging from 60 to 67 ${\mu}$m as determined by confocal laser microscopy. The host composition of the microsphere is close to that of the fiber core. The dopant Dy$^{3+}$ ions are uniformly distributed across the microsphere as evidenced by ${\mu}$-luminescence studies and present a luminescence lifetime. The Dy$^{3+}$-doped glass microspheres were excited via evanescent field coupling using a half-tapered fiber and a blue 450-nm GaN laser diode (direct pumping scheme). The yellow fluorescence of Dy$^{3+}$ ions is filtered by the whispering gallery modes (free spectral range: 0.5 nm for 67-${\mu}$m radius microsphere). The onset of stimulated emission is further observed highlighting the potential of such microresonators for narrow-linewidth light sources directly emitting visible light.

physics.optics↗