Single-fiber tweezers applied for dye lasing in a fluid droplet

Zhihai Liu, Yunhao Chen, Li Zhao, Yu Zhang, Yong Wei, Hanyang Li, Yongjun Liu, Yaxun Zhang, Enming Zhao, Xinghua Yang, Jianzhong Zhang, and Libo Yuan

We report on the first demonstration of a single-fiber optical tweezer that is utilized to stabilize and control the liquid droplet for dye lasing. In order to trap a liquid droplet with a diameter of 15–30 μm, an annular core micro-structured optical fiber is adopted. By using wavelength division multiplexing technology, we couple a trapping light source (980 nm) and a pumping light source (532 nm) into the annular core of the fiber to realize the trapping, controlling, and pumping of the oil droplet. We show that the laser emission spectrum tunes along the same size as the oil droplet. The lasing threshold of the oil droplet with the diameter of 24 μm is 0.7 μJ. The presented fiber-based optical manipulation of liquid droplet micro-lasers can be easily combined with the micro-fluidic chip technology and also may extend the application of optical fiber tweezers for micro-droplet lasing technology in the biological field.

DOI