title: Temporal beating of nondegenerate azimuthal modes in nonspherical microdroplets: technique for determining the distortion amplitude.
abstract: Oscillations that are superimposed on the smooth, exponential decay of light from microcavity modes are observed, and they are characteristic of the temporal beating of adjacent, degeneracy-split azimuthal modes in distorted spheres. The perturbation theory result for the frequency splitting of azimuthal modes in distorted spheres is used to determine the distortion amplitude from the temporal oscillations associated with mode beating. The beating period can be used to determine whether the spectrally measured resonance linewidth Deltaomega(l,n) is broadened by closely spaced, degeneracy-split azimuthal modes of slightly nonspherical droplets.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics and Center for Laser Diagnostics, Yale University, P.O. Box 208284, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8284, USA.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Hartings
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Cheung
authors.forename: R K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Chang