Temperature tuning of optical whispering-gallery modes as a sensitive probe of thermal interaction between a fused-silica microsphere and the ambient air

Summary from only given. We used a tunable diode laser operating near 1550 nm to investigate various effects of the heat transfer from fused-silica microspheres to the surrounding air. The resonance frequencies of microsphere whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) excited by a tapered-fiber coupler, shift with increasing temperature. This shift, primarily due to the temperature dependence of the refractive index of fused silica, enables the measurements whose results are reported here. Novel techniques for determining the thermal accommodation coefficient and the optical absorption coefficient are presented.