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Cavity ring-up spectroscopy for ultrafast sensing with optical microresonators

Spectroscopy of whispering-gallery mode (WGM) microresonators has become a powerful scientific tool, enabling detection of single viruses, nanoparticles, and even single molecules. Yet the demonstrated timescale of these schemes has been limited so far to milliseconds or more. Here we introduce a novel scheme that is orders of magnitude faster, capable of capturing complete spectral snapshots of WGM resonances at nanosecond timescales: cavity ring-up spectroscopy (CRUS). Based on sharply-rising detuned probe pulses, CRUS combines the sensitivity of heterodyne measurements with the highest possible, transform-limited acquisition rate. As a demonstration we capture spectra of microtoroid resonators at time intervals as short as 16 ns, directly monitoring sub-microsecond dynamics of their optomechanical vibrations, thermorefractive response and Kerr nonlinearity. CRUS holds promise for the study of fast biological processes such as enzyme kinetics, protein folding and light harvesting, with applications in other fields such as cavity QED and pulsed optomechanics.