Optical microcavities are structures that enable confinement of light to microscale volumes. The universal importance of these structures has made them indispensable to a wide range of fields. This important book describes the many applications and the related physics, providing both a review and a tutorial of key subjects by leading researchers from each field. The topics include cavity QED and quantum information, nanophotonics and nanostructure interactions, wavelength switching and modulation in optical communications, optical chaos and biosensors.Contents: Optical Resonators and Filters (H A Haus et al.)Microfabricated Optical Cavities and Photonic Crystals (M Lončar & A Scherer)Semiconductor Lasers for Telecommunications (T L Koch)Cavity-Enhanced Single Photons from a Quantum Dot (J Vuèković et al.)Fabrication, Coupling and Nonlinear Optics of Ultra-High-Q Micro-Sphere and Chip-Based Toroid Microcavities (T J Kippenberg et al.)Nonlinear Optical Properties of Semiconductor Quantum Wells inside Microcavities (T Meier et al.)Polymer Microring Resonators (P Rabiei & W H Steier)Atoms in Microcavities: Quantum Electrodynamics, Quantum Statistical Mechanics, and Quantum Information Science (A C Doherty & H Mabuchi)Progress in Asymmetric Resonant Cavities: Using Shape as a Design Parameter in Dielectric Microcavity Lasers (H G L Schwefel et al.)Readership: Upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, academics, researchers and practitioners in the fields of general optics, optical communications, quantum optics, quantum information, bioengineering/biophysics, lasers and photonics.