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New Insight into Nonlinear Optical Resonators Unlocks Door to Numerous Potential Applications
Optical resonators, which circulate and confine light (for instance in lasers), are currently used in a variety of applications of all sizes-from pinpoint light sources smaller than the width of a human hair to kilometer-scale sensing devices such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment that detects gravitational waves.
Devices known as optical parametric oscillators are among the widely used nonlinear resonators in optics; they are “nonlinear” in that there is light flowing into the system and light leaking out, but not at the same wavelengths. Though these oscillators are useful in a variety of applications, including in quantum optics experiments, the physics that underpins how their output wavelength, or spectrum, behaves is not well understood.