Berry phase magnification in optical microcoil resonators

Lee, Timothy, Broderick, Neil G.R. and Brambilla, Gilberto (2011) Berry phase magnification in optical microcoil resonators. Optics Letters, 36 (15), 2839-2841. (doi:10.1364/OL.36.002839).

Record type: Article

Abstract

We have studied the effects of the Berry phase on the linear transmission properties of optical microcoil resonators and analyzed the resonant behavior for different input polarizations and coil geometries. Contrary to previous expectations, we find that on resonance the size of the Berry phase shift can be magnified significantly, leading to a measurable polarization rotation for some geometries. Our model also considers other polarization effects including elasto-optic bend birefringence and the polarization dependent coupling coefficients, which were also previously neglected, and we still find that observable Berry phase effects persist. For example, in a three turn microcoil with a diameter of 0.2mm, close to 100% of an initially x polarized light will be coupled into the orthogonal y polarization, due to the optical activity arising from the cumulative effects of Berry phase on resonance. More generally, the cross-polarization coupling also significantly influences the resonance extinction ratio and quality factor.

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