Evidence for Nearest Neighbor Coupling in Arrays of Ellipsoidal Microcavity Plasmas

Arrays of ellipsoidal microcavities have been fabricated in glass by a micropowder blasting technique. Optical microscopy of the plasmas generated in arrays of these cavities provides evidence of coupling between each microplasma and its nearest neighbors. Scattering of incoherent atomic radiation from one microplasma into adjacent microcavities is clearly observed. After correcting for field-of-view distortion and saturation, the images also appear to reveal the perturbation of each microplasma by its neighbor in the form of an elongation of the emission distribution along the axis joining the two cavities.