optical resonator

1. A part of a laser, consisting of two mirrors, one highly reflective and one partly reflective, placed on either side of a laser pump. Amplified light bounces back and forth between the mirrors, enhancing stimulated emission within the pump, eventually being emitted through the partly reflective mirror.

2. See more at laser

Example Sentences

The main characteristic of an optical resonator is the quality factor — the ratio of the time over which the device can trap light to the period of the wave’s oscillation.

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In photonics, a light wave that is trapped by an optical resonator can be converted to a BIC under certain conditions3 — a discovery that was made only in 2008.

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Figure 1 | Increasing the quality factor of an optical resonator.

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Jin et al.1 report simulations of and experiments on a light-trapping device known as an optical resonator.

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It can also be used to tune an optical resonator into the ‘supercavity’ regime, in which emission of light from the resonator is restrained4.

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