Optical microresonator

Figure 5. Cross section (a) and top view (b) of an integrated optical microresonator sensor with radius R = 15 tun.

Klunder D.J.W., Photon Physics in Integrated Optics Microresonators, Ph.D. thesis, University of Twente, 135 p (2002). 

Shopova, S. I., Nanoparticle Coated Optical Microresonators for Whispering Gallery Lasing and Other Applications, PhD dissertation, Oklahoma State University, 2007... 

Label-Free Biochemical Sensors Based on Optical Microresonators... 

Optoelectronic devices based on optical microresonators that strongly confine photons and electrons form a basis for next-generation compact-size, low-power and high-speed photonic circuits. By tailoring the resonator shape, size or material composition, the microresonator can be tuned to support a spectrum of optical (i.e., electromagnetic) modes with required polarization, frequency and emission patterns. This offers the potential for... 

Progress in the design and fabrication of high-quality optical microresonators is closely related to the development of novel optical materials and technologies. The key material systems used for microresonator fabrication include silica, silica on silicon, silicon, silicon on insulator, silicon nitride and oxynitride, polymers, semiconductors such as GaAs, InP, GalnAsP, GaN, etc, and crystalline materials such as lithium niobate and calcium fluoride. Table 2 smnmarises the optical characteristics of these materials (see Eldada, 2000, 2001 Hillmer, 2003 Poulsen, 2003 for more detail). 

Table 2. Properties of some key optical microresonator material systems.

It is difficult to overestimate the growing importance of optical microresonators in both fundamental and applied research, and thus it is hardly possible to cover in detail the progress in all the areas of their application. In the following sections, we shall briefly review some of the... 

Linear arrays of optical microresonators evanescently coupled to each other can also be used for optical power transfer (Fig. 6). This type of coupled-resonator optical waveguide (CROW) has recently been proposed (Yariv, 1999) and then demonstrated and studied in a variety of material and geometrical configurations, such as sequences of planar microrings (Poon, 2004), arrays of coupled microspheres (Astratov, 2004), and chains of photonic crystal defect cavities (Olivier, 2001). 

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