Special Issue on the 60th anniversary of the first laser—Series I: Microcavity Photonics—from fundamentals to applications
In 1960, the first laser was demonstrated by Theodore Maiman. Since then, lasers have been playing a pivotal role in exploring light-matter interactions which are at the heart of modern optical physics. Nowadays, lasers are employed in many photonics applications. An essential building block of most lasers is an optical cavity. Optical cavities confine the light in spatial and temporal dimensions, often down to the micron/nano-meter scale and as long as hundreds of nanoseconds, thereby providing a prominent platform for studying strongly-enhanced light-matter interactions. Optical microcavities are of particular importance not only for developing miniature laser sources, but also as research tools for studying fundamental optical phenomena such as optical chaos and quantum optical effects. They are also used in many emerging advanced applications such as metrology, and nano and quantum sensing.
This special issue covers a series of cutting-edge works on advanced physics and applications of optical microcavities and microlasers, ranging from the study of chaotic resonances, microcombs and soliton physics, lasers with tailored orbital angular momentum, coherent light-matter coupling and quantum condensation, optical nonreciprocity, to multiplexed biochemical sensing. In what follows, a brief introduction to each topic will be presented along with their key implications highlighted.
