Near infrared elastic light scattering by a silicon microsphere

Abstract

We observed high quality elastic light scattering from a silicon microsphere in the standard telecommunication band. A tunable diode laser was used as the excitation source and a single mode silica optical fiber setup delivered the input laser light to the microsphere. The silicon microsphere was manipulated on the silica optical fiber half coupler (OFHC) to effectively couple the evanescent laser field to the microsphere thus exciting the whispering gallery modes (WGM's). We observed high quality factor WGM's which can lead to novel geometries and applications for silicon microsphere based optoelectronic devices, such as filters, modulators, and detectors.