Implementation of a reference interferometer for nanodetection.

A thermally and mechanically stabilized fiber interferometer suited for examining ultra-high quality factor microcavities is fashioned. After assessing its free spectral range (FSR), the module is put in parallel with a fiber taper-microcavity system and then calibrated through isolating and eliminating random shifts in the laser frequency (i.e. laser jitter noise). To realize the taper-microcavity junction and to maximize the optical power that is transferred to the resonator, a single-mode optical fiber waveguide is pulled. Solutions containing polystyrene nanobeads are then prepared and flown to the microcavity in order to demonstrate the system's ability to sense binding to the surface of the microcavity. Data is post-processed via adaptive curve fitting, which allows for high-resolution measurements of the quality factor as well as the plotting of time-dependent parameters, such as resonant wavelength and split frequency shifts. By carefully inspecting steps in the time-domain response and shifting in the frequency-domain response, this instrument can quantify discrete binding events.