Pulsed excitation of a whispering gallery resonator

We demonstrate steady state pulsed pumping of a lithium niobate whispering gallery disk resonator. Coherent excitation is achieved by matching the repetition rate of a pumping mode-locked laser to a sub multiple of the free spectral range of one of the sets of modes of the disk. Once the disk is excited, we measure the resonatorpsilas quality factor by the fractional loss per round trip, and, after blocking the excitation, by the pulsed ringdown time decay. Both values agree with the quality factor measured by continuous wave transmission.