EPL

Issue		Europhys. Lett. Volume 39, Number 4, August 1997
Page(s)		371 - 376
Section		General
DOI		10.1209/epl/i1997-00364-5

Dynamical tunneling in optical cavities DOI: 10.1209/epl/i1997-00364-5

Europhys. Lett, 39 (4), pp. 371-376 (1997)

Dynamical tunneling in optical cavities

G. Hackenbroich and J. U. Nöckel

Yale University, Department of Applied Physics
15 Prospect Street, New Haven CT 06520, USA

(received 4 February 1997; accepted in final form 15 July 1997)

PACS. 05.45 - Theory and models of chaotic systems.
PACS. 03.80 - General theory of scattering.
PACS. 42.55Sa - Microcavity and microdisk lasers.

Abstract:

The lifetime of whispering gallery modes in a dielectric cavity with a metallic inclusion is shown to fluctuate by orders of magnitude when size and location of the inclusion are varied. We ascribe these fluctuations to tunneling transitions between resonances quantized in different regions of phase space. This interpretation is confirmed by a comparison of the classical phase space structure with the Husimi distribution of the resonant modes. A model Hamiltonian is introduced that describes the phenomenon and shows that it can be expected in a more general class of systems.

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