Passive Optical Resonators

Abstract

This chapter deals with the theory of passive optical resonators. What we mean by a passive optical resonator is a cavity consisting of reflecting surfaces and containing a homogeneous, isotropic, and passive dielectric medium. We recall that a mode of a resonator was defined in Section 2.1 as a stationary e.m. field configuration which satisfies both Maxwell’s equations and the boundary conditions. The electric field of this configuration can then be written as

$$\text{E(r,}t\text{)=}{{E}_{\text{0}}}\text{u(r)exp(}i\omega t\text{)}$$

(4.1)

where ω/2π is the mode frequency.