Optical instability and self-pulsing in silicon nitride whispering gallery resonators

We report time domain observations of optical instability in high Q silicon nitride whispering gallery disk resonators. At low laser power the transmitted optical power through the disk looks chaotic. At higher power, the optical output settles into a stable self-pulsing regime with periodicity ranging from hundreds of milliseconds to hundreds of seconds. This phenomenon is explained by the interplay between a fast thermo-optic nonlinearity within the disk and a slow thermo-mechanic nonlinearity of the structure. A model for this interplay is developed which provides good agreement with experimental data and points out routes to control this instability. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America