Distributed exponential enhancement of phase sensitivity and intensity by coupled resonant cavities

Abstract

It is shown that coupled Gires-Tournois interferometers or mathematically equivalent ring resonators exhibit distributed exponential enhancement of the phase shifts of the cavities and of the intensity of the incident wave. For identical coupled elements, this leads to a resonant increase in intensity and linear phase sensitivity in any cavity of the chain by a factor of single resonator finesse to the power of the order of this cavity, n, and also leads to an increase in sensitivity to nonlinear optical phase by finesse to the power of 2n.