On-chip ultrahigh-Q microcavities for highly unidirectional emission

Optical whispering gallery mode (WGM) microcavities are promising candidates for basic research and optoelectronic applications. Due to the isotropic emission property resulting from the rotational symmetry, traditional WGM microcavities have to rely on external couplers to excite the modes and collect their emission. One of the most possible solutions is to deform microcavities from rotational symmetry, which could provide directional emission instead of isotropic characteristic. Here we report the first experimental realization of on-chip microcavities which support both highly unidirectional emission and ultra-high Q factors. The demonstrated Q factor exceeds 100 million in near infrared. By doping erbium into the deformed microcavity, lasing action in 1550 nm band was observed under convenient freespace optical pumping, with the threshold as low as 2 μW. Remarkably, the lasing emission is along a single direction with a narrow divergence angle about 10 degrees.