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Applications of WGM Microcavities in Physics

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Optical Whispering Gallery Modes for Biosensing

Part of the book series: Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering ((BIOMEDICAL))

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Abstract

Various applications have been explored for the whispering-gallery-mode microcavities. The microcavity-based laser generation and nonlinear optics potentially allow a micron-sized light source that may be used in a photonic integrated circuit. The miniaturized optical frequency combs serve as a bridge between the radio and optical domains. Besides, the microcavities can be utilized to study the fundamental problems in physics, for instance, the parity and time-reversal symmetric non-Hermitian quantum mechanics. The applications of microcavities in optomechanics and nanoparticle trapping are also introduced.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The ordinary unitary operators are linear, \(U(\alpha \varPsi )=\alpha U(\varPsi )\) with a complex number \(\alpha \) and a wavefunction \(\varPsi \). In contrast, \(\mathcal {T}\) acting on a superposition state \((\alpha \varPsi +\beta \varPhi )\) gives \(\mathcal {T}(\alpha \varPsi +\beta \varPhi )=\alpha ^{*}\mathcal {T}\varPsi +\beta ^{*}\mathcal {T}\varPhi \), which is called the antilinear (conjugate-linear) relation. Additionally, one has the inner product \(\langle \mathcal {T}\varPsi |\mathcal {T}\varPhi \rangle =\langle \varPsi ^{*}|\varPhi ^{*}\rangle =\langle \varPsi |\varPhi \rangle ^{*}=\langle \varPhi |\varPsi \rangle \). The antilinear operators that satisfy this inner product relation are called the antiunitary operators. For a spinless particle, we have \(\mathcal {T}=K\) with \(U=1\), \(UK=KU\), \(\mathcal {T}^{\dag }=\mathcal {T}\) and \(\mathcal {T}^{2}=1\). For a spin-1/2 particle, one may prove \(\mathcal {T}=UK\) with \(U=\sigma _{y}\), \(UK=-KU\), \(\mathcal {T}^{\dag }=-\mathcal {T}\), and \(\mathcal {T}^{2}=-1\). Here \(\sigma _{y}\) is the y-component of Pauli’s spin matrices.

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    Frank Vollmer & Deshui Yu

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Vollmer, F., Yu, D. (2020). Applications of WGM Microcavities in Physics. In: Optical Whispering Gallery Modes for Biosensing. Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60235-2_4

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