Non-Lorentzian pump resonances in whispering gallery optical parametric oscillators

Whispering gallery optical parametric oscillators are millimeter-sized monolithic sources for tunable coherent light. Several experiments have revealed that during optical parametric oscillation the pump resonance strongly differs from a Lorentzian shape. We theoretically and experimentally analyze these line-shape distortions. It turns out that the line shape of the pump resonance strongly depends on the coupling strength of the pump light and on the loss ratio between generated light and pump light. The line-widths, i.e. the losses, for the light generated by the parametric process can be deduced without measuring them directly.