| Summary: | Optical microresonators: Investigating light’s tiny whispers Optical whispering-gallery mode microresonators can trap light in a highly confined volume, similar to the behavior of sound waves in the famous whispering gallery of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, and are being used for a diverse variety of optical studies and applications. Xuefeng Jiang and Lan Yang at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, review the optothermal behaviors induced by power build-up in the resonators or environmental perturbations in these systems. Several techniques have been developed with the help of optothermal behaviors, such as optothermal spectroscopy, thermal tuning, thermal locking, thermal imaging, etc. Temperature fluctuations affect the resonant frequencies of the light they contain, which can be used for thermal sensing applications, but must also be controlled to avoid problems caused by heat fluctuations when the microresonators are used in other applications.
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