Phys.org  January 19, 2022 An international team of researchers (Germany, UK, Scotland, Switzerland) has demonstrated that the Kerr effect in a high-finesse Fabry-Pérot resonator can be utilized to control the polarization of a continuous wave laser. They showed that a linearly polarized input field is converted into a left- or right-circularly-polarized field, controlled via the optical power. The observations are explained by Kerr-nonlinearity induced symmetry breaking, which splits the resonance frequencies of degenerate modes with opposite polarization handedness in an otherwise symmetric resonator. According to the researchers in the future one could arrange many of these devices onto a photonic […]