
Floating oil droplet contains hundreds of degenerate optical modes - dr_dshiv
https://physicsworld.com/a/floating-oil-droplet-contains-hundreds-of-degenerate-optical-modes/
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dr_dshiv
From the abstract, here:
[https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.03...](https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.031049)

Spherical resonators have a high degree of degeneracy thanks to their highest
symmetry; yet, fabricating perfect spheres is challenging because even a stem
to hold the sphere breaks the symmetry. Here we fabricate a levitating
spherical resonator that is evanescently coupled to a standard optical fiber.
We characterize the resonators to exhibit an optical quality factor exceeding
a billion, 10 μm radius, and sphericity to within less than 1 Å. Using our
high quality and sphericity, we experimentally lift degeneracies of orders
higher than 200, which we resolve with optical finesse exceeding 10 000 000.
We then present our experimentally measured degenerate modes as well as their
density of states next to our corresponding theoretical calculation. Our
contactless photonic resonator is compatible with standard telecom fiber
technology, exhibits the highest resonance enhancement as defined by (quality
factor)/(mode volume), and the modes populating our cavity show the highest
order of degeneracy reported in any system ever studied.“

Levitating perfect spheres for ultra senitive high bandwidth communication and
computation?

