Patent ID: 7630603

Claim:
An optical resonator comprising: a plurality of segments of a slab optical waveguide, the slab optical waveguide being within a semiconductor layer of a semiconductor on insulator (SOI) substrate, at least one of the segments comprising one or both of a ridge-loaded slab optical waveguide and a reverse ridge-loaded slab optical waveguide; a plurality of total internal reflection (TIR) mirrors, a number of TIR mirrors in the plurality of TIR mirrors being equal to a number of segments in the plurality of segments; and a photo-tunneling input/output (I/O) port, wherein the plurality of segments of the optical waveguide is arranged as a closed loop wherein successive pairs of the segments are connected to one another at respective segment ends by successive ones of the TIR mirrors, and wherein the photo-tunneling I/O port comprises a designated TIR mirror of the successive TIR mirrors of the plurality of TIR mirrors.