Design and Applications of Optical Microsphere Resonators;Doctoral thesis

摘要

Microscopic spherical silica particles, as small as 0.1 mm in diameter, can function as optical whispering-gallery-mode resonators supporting Q-values of 10 to the 8th power and beyond. Such enormously high quality factors represent unique performance characteristics: an extremely narrow resonant linewidth, long decay time and a high energy density. Envisioned uses for these miniature high-Q resonators include, for example, cavity-QED experimentation, detection and sensing, frequency stabilization, and optical filtering functions.