Directional interacting whispering-gallery modes in coupled dielectric microdisks

We study the optical interaction in a coupled dielectric microdisks by investigating the splitting of resonance positions of interacting whispering-gallery modes (WGM's) and their pattern change, depending on the distance between the microdisks. It is shown that the interaction between the WGM's with odd parity about the y axis becomes appreciable at a distance less than a wavelength and causes directional emissions of the resulting interacting WGM's. The directionality of the interacting WGM's can be understood in terms of an effective boundary deformation in ray dynamical analysis. We also discuss the oscillation of the splitting when the distance is greater than a wavelength.