Intrinsic quality factor determination in whispering gallery mode microcavities using a single Stokes parameters measurement

Determination of the intrinsic quality factor of a loaded whispering gallery mode microcavity can be important for many applications where the coupling conditions cannot be tuned. We propose a single-scan technique based on a Stokes parameters analysis to extract the intrinsic quality factor and therefore determine the coupling regime. We propose a simple model for this analysis and present experimental measurements, which are in very good agreement with the model. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America