High quality-factor optical micro-resonators and slow-light
Yannick Dumeige (Laboratoire FOTON, Université de Rennes)

High quality-factor optical micro-resonators with long photon lifetimes are of great interest in contemporary photonics. In the linear regime, they can be used as optical memories, delay lines, highly selective filters with applications in biological or chemical sensing and in optical signal processing. In this talk we will show that by introducing optical gain within microcavities their dispersive and filtering properties can be enhanced and controlled. We will also show that slowing down the light propagation can increase by several order of magnitude, up to few milliseconds, the photon lifetime of whispering gallery mode micro-resonators operating in the near infrared.