Observing Variation in Whispering Gallery Mode Resonance of a Trapped and Levitated Dye Doped Microdrop

Abstract

Whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonance was created in a spherical micro drop. A gradual shift in the resonance were observed. For a 600 nm droplet radius, the blue shift were 1.5, 0.7, 3.7 nm. It was estimated that such a shift corresponds to a reduction in optical radius of the droplet by 1.3, 0.6, 3.3 nm respectively. The droplet was created from a solution of glycerol, methanol and rhodamine 6G dye, and was trapped and levitated in a modified Paul trap. The WGMs were created by optically exciting the dye material from an external 532 nm cw laser beam. A shift in the WGM was observed during a gradual increase in power of the excitation laser, and a reason for such a shift was thought to be thermal evaporation of the liquid. For a larger droplet an initial 0.1 nm thermal expansion was also estimated, preceding the volume contraction. Such an expansion was negligible for a smaller droplet. The rate of change of the blue shift depends upon initial radius of the droplet. For the smaller droplet the estimated rate of change of WGM with a change in optical radius, was 0.771. For larger droplet, this rate is lower.