We demonstrate that the harmonic inversion technique is a powerful tool to analyze the spectral properties of optical microcavities. As an interesting example we study the statistical properties of complex frequencies of the fully chaotic microstadium. We show that the conjectured fractal Weyl law for open chaotic systems [Lu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 154101 (2003)] is valid for dielectric microcavities only if the concept of the chaotic repeller is extended to a multifractal by incorporating Fresnel’s laws.

• Received 5 September 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.77.036205