Sub-MHz spectral dip in a resonator-free twisted gain medium

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel, resonator-free method to achieve ultra-narrow, tunable optical spectral features at room temperature using a twisted birefringent medium with Brillouin gain, reaching a record 0.72 MHz linewidth.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach leveraging gain-enhanced polarization pulling in twisted media to produce sub-MHz spectral features without resonators.

Findings

Achieved a 0.72 MHz spectral dip in backward Brillouin scattering.

Demonstrated room-temperature operation without resonators.

Potential to reduce linewidth below 0.1 MHz with further optimization.

Abstract

Ultra-narrow optical spectral features resulting from highly dispersive light-matter interactions are essential for a broad range of applications such as spectroscopy, slow-light, and high-precision sensing. Features approaching sub-MHz, or equivalently, Q-factors approaching ~1 billion and beyond, are challenging to obtain in solid-state systems, ultimately limited by loss. We present a novel approach to achieve tunable sub-MHz spectral features, at room temperature, without resonators. We exploit gain-enhanced polarization pulling in a twisted birefringent medium where polarization eigenmodes are frequency-dependent. Using Brillouin gain in a commercial spun fiber, we experimentally achieve a 0.72 MHz spectral dip, the narrowest backward Brillouin scattering feature ever reported. Further optimization can potentially reduce the linewidth to <0.1 MHz. Our approach is simple and broadly applicable, offering on-demand tunability and high sensitivity, with a wide range of applications such as microwave photonic filters, slow and fast light, and optical sensing.