The generation of coherent light based on inelastic stimulated Raman scattering in photonic microresonators has been attracting great interest in recent years. Tellurite glasses are promising materials for such microdevices since they have large Raman gain and large Raman frequency shift. We experimentally obtained Raman lasing at a wavelength of 1.8 µm with a frequency shift of 27.5 THz from a 1.54 µm narrow-line pump in a 60 µm tellurite glass microsphere with a Q-factor of 2.5 × 107. We demonstrated experimentally a robust, simple, and cheap way of thermo-optically controlled on/off switching of Raman lasing in a tellurite glass microsphere by an auxiliary laser diode. With a permanently operating narrow-line pump laser, on/off switching of the auxiliary 405 nm laser diode led to off/on switching of Raman generation. We also performed theoretical studies supporting the experimental results. The temperature distribution and thermal frequency shifts in eigenmodes in the microspheres heated by the thermalized power of an auxiliary diode and the partially thermalized power of a pump laser were numerically simulated. We analyzed the optical characteristics of Raman generation in microspheres of different diameters. The numerical results were in good agreement with the experimental ones.
Keywords: Raman lasing; optical microresonator; tellurite glass; thermo-optical control; whispering gallery modes.