Optical Microresonator Theory

Optical resonators manifest themselves everyday in our world: from the lasers in supermarket scanners to the colorful patterns reflected from oil slicks. They all share the ability to selectively modify certain optical properties within narrow spectral ranges. In this chapter, we introduce fundamental concepts associated with optical microresonators. Although introduced in the context of optical microring resonators, the concepts may be applied to a variety of resonant physical systems independent of application or scale. Many of the ideas presented in the chapter are thus equally applicable to analogous microwave and acoustic resonators.