Microcavites dielectriques circulaires et applications

This document describes the work done in the scope of a Master's in engineering physics on dielectric optical microcavities. The work has been divided into two main themes; the development of a base technology on optical cavities of the silica microdisk type and on the realization of two applications using this technology.;The second part presents a few applications that use this very high quality factor microresonator technology. A first application uses different cavity configurations to produce optical filters capable of controlling the spectral emission of an EDFL. By introducing these high quality filters into the optical cavity of the laser, it is possible to select the wavelengths that can propagate in order to limit the modes that achieve the lasing conditions. A second application consists in the fabrication of a linear series of silica microcavities with very low inter cavity distances allowing optical coupling between adjacent microdisks. The optical energy can then be transferred from cavity to cavity and thus can propagate through the structure as through a standard waveguide. This new type of structure is called coupled resonator optical waveguide (CROW). We present here the first experimental results of transmission through a CROW made of silica disks.;The first part presents the work done to advance our comprehension of the phenomenon concerned in the workings of the silica microresonator. To accomplish this, an experimental approach was adopted. Some microfabrication processes and an optical characterization setup were developed in order to permit the study of real behavior of these structures and to optimize there performance with specific applications in mind. New fabrication techniques, such as dry etching of silica, were developed to permit the production of vertical walled microdisks. This gives us better control on the dimensions of the cavities and reduces variations on the optical coupling of the cavities with tapered optical fibers. The optical setup that enables us to optically couple with a tapered fiber allows us to spectrally characterize the cavity resonances and evaluate their respective quality factors.