Microcavity-quality-factor enhancement using nonlinear effects close to the bistability threshold and coherent population oscillations

摘要

We analytically show that inserting a driven, two-level system inside a microcavity can improve its opticalnproperties. In this approach, the strong dispersion induced by a pump via population oscillations increasesnthe cavity lifetime experienced by a slightly detuned probe. We further predict that if the cavity is pumpednthrough a resonant channel, optical absorptive or dispersive bistability can be combined with the populationoscillation-ninduced steep material dispersion to obtain a strong quality-factor enhancement. Moreover, differentialnamplification coming from the nonlinear feature of the pump transfer function can be used to drastically increasenthe probe transmission beyond intrinsic characteristics of the resonator. The Q-factor enhancement and thendifferential amplification can be advantageously combined with a frequency pulling effect to stabilize or readjustnthe microcavity resonance frequency.