Advanced microresonator structures for telecommunication applications

Optical microresonators of different configurations have been studied extensively over the last two decades and applied successfully in various fields in photonics, such as light-atom interactions, quantum electrodynamics, sensing and telecommunications. In general, they rely on light trapping in small volumes, primarily by whispering-gallery mode (WGM) excitation. The resulting high-Q resonances show significant internal intensity build-up and tremendous increase of the effective propagation lengths. These attributes facilitate a number of optical functions, such as low threshold lasing, efficient non-linear interactions, controlled dispersion, and make optical microresonators very good candidates as building blocks in miniaturised, highly-efficient integrated circuits. In this presentation, we review various advanced microresonator structures and consider their applicability in different telecommunication applications. We will consider microresonator-based devices such as fully integrated microsphere lasers, microsphere-based filters with improved characteristics, bottle-microresonator based add-drop multiplexers and tapered-microcylinder dispersion compensators