Fabrication of dispersion engineered ultrahigh-Q crystalline optical microresonator for broad-bandwidth optical parametric oscillation

We demonstrate the all-precision-machining fabrication of ultrahigh-quality-factor (Q) crystalline optical microresonators. The obtained Q exceeds 100 million for both magnesium fluoride (MgF2) and calcium fluoride (CaF2) materials. This constitutes the highest Q factor obtained for whispering gallery mode crystalline microresonators fabricated solely by ultra-precision machining. We also achieve octave-wide optical parametric oscillation using an MgF2 resonator fabricated with a computer-controlled machining process. This method readily enables advanced dispersion engineering for optical parametric oscillation and makes it possible to explore microcavity nonlinear optics and quantum optics without the need for skilled manual polishing techniques.