title: Directional tunneling escape from nearly spherical optical resonators.
abstract: We report the surprising observation of directional tunneling escape from nearly spherical fused-silica optical resonators, in which most of the phase space is filled with nonchaotic regular trajectories. Experimental and theoretical studies of the dependence of the far-field emission pattern on both the degree of deformation and the excitation condition show that nonperturbative phase-space structures in the internal ray dynamics profoundly affect tunneling leakage of the whispering-gallery modes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lacey
authors.forename: Hailin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: David H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Foster
authors.forename: Jens U
authors.initials: JU
authors.lastname: Nöckel