Manufacture of Sparse-Spectrum Optical Microresonators

An alternative design for dielectric optical microresonators and a relatively simple process to fabricate them have been proposed. The proposed microresonators would exploit the same basic physical phenomena as those of microtorus optical resonators and of the microsphere optical resonators described in several prior NASA Tech Briefs articles. The resonances in such devices are associated with the propagation of electromagnetic waves along circumferential.paths in “whispering-gallery” modes. The main advantage afforded by the proposal is that the design and the fabrication process are expected to be amenable to production of multiple microresonators having reproducible spectral parameters — including, most notably, high values of the resonance quality factor (Q) and reproducible resonance frequencies.