Mode characteristics of a strongly confined square cavity suspended in air via a pedestal on the substrate are investigated by a three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain technique. The mode wavelengths and mode quality factors (Q factors) are calculated as the functions of the size of the pedestal and the slope angle θ of the sidewalls of the square slab, respectively. For the square slab with side length of $2\mu \mathrm{m}$ , thickness of $0.2\mu \mathrm{m}$ , and refractive index of 3.4, on a square pedestal with refractive index of 3.17, the Q factor of the whispering-gallery (WG)-like mode transverse-electric ${\mathrm{TE}}_{(3,5)}^o$ first increases with the side length b of the square pedestal and then quickly decreases as $b>0.4\mu \mathrm{m}$ , but the Q factor of the WG-like mode ${\mathrm{TE}}_{(4,6)}^o$ drops down quickly as $b>0.2\mu \mathrm{m}$ , owing to their different symmetries. The results indicate that the pedestal can also result in mode selection in the WG-like modes. In addition, the numerical results show that the Q factors decrease 50% as the slope angle of the sidewalls varies from 90° to 80°. The mode characteristics of WG-like modes in the square cavity with a rectangular pedestal are also discussed. The results show that the nonsquare pedestal largely degrades the WG-like modes.

© 2006 Optical Society of America

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Figure files are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Article level metrics are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

Related Journal Articles

• Effects of finite apertures on transverse eigenmodes of optical resonators (JOSAA)
• Experimental Study of Generalized Self-Filtering Unstable Resonators in an Ablative-Wall Flash-Lamp-Pumped Dye Laser (AO)
• Design and Operation of a Very Large Ring Laser Gyroscope (AO)
• Locking a microsphere whispering-gallery mode to a laser (OE)
• Reference-Beam Storage for Long-Range Low-Coherence Pulsed Doppler Lidar (AO)

Related Conference Papers

• Extended and Localized Photon States in 1D-Coupled Resonators
• Slow Light in Optical Waveguides and the Influence of Loss
• Designing High-Q Silicon-on-Insulator Optical Resonators for Planar Device Integration
• Light in Microresonators and Chaos Theory
• Optical Combs and Photonic RF Oscillators with Whispering-Gallery Mode Microresonators