Optical losses in plasma-etched AlGaAs microresonators using reflection spectroscopy

The optical losses in dry-etched monolithic microresonators have been studied as a function of their lateral dimensions. Cylindrical microresonators with various radii have been etched from a planar GaAlAs/GaAs microcavity with a very high quality factor (Q congruent to 11 700). Measurements of the resonance linewidth, using Ti-sapphire laser spectroscopy allowed to study the degradation of the Q factor at small radii. The Q factor is four times smaller in 1.1 mu m radius microresonators, compared to the unprocessed cavity. This degradation is attributed to optical scattering from sidewalls, whose efficiency is shown to scale with the guided mode intensity at the microresonator edge. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)01007-4].