Shot-noise-limited measurement of sub–parts-per-trillion birefringence phase shift in a high-finesse cavity

Durand, Mathieu; Morville, Jérôme; Romanini, D.

doi:10.1103/physreva.82.031803

Cited by 48 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Recent demonstrations of background-free CEP, where drifts in mirror birefringence are intentionally negated by the measurement scheme, have reported impressive observations of weak intracavity birefringence for the purpose of quantifying the Kerr effect in gases [41], for detecting parity-nonconserving optical rotation in metastable atoms [42], and for the measurement of optical activity in chiral molecules [43, 44]. In earlier implementations of CEP, however, mirror birefringence remained a significant source of non-negligible background signal [45–50].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precision interferometric measurements of mirror birefringence in high-finesse optical resonators

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

High-finesse optical resonators found in ultrasensitive laser spectrometers utilize supermirrors ideally consisting of isotropic high-reflectivity coatings. Strictly speaking, however, the optical coatings are often non-uniformly stressed during the deposition process and therefore do possess some small amount of birefringence. When physically mounted the cavity mirrors can be additionally stressed in such a way that large optical birefringence is induced. Here we report a direct measurement of optical birefringence in a two-mirror Fabry-Pérot cavity with R = 99.99 % by observing TEM00 mode beating during cavity decays. Experiments were performed at a wavelength of 4.53 μm, with precision limited by both quantum and technical noise sources. We report a splitting of δν = 618(1) Hz, significantly less than the intrinsic cavity linewidth of δcav ≈ 3 kHz. With a cavity free spectral range of 96.9 MHz, the equivalent fractional change in mirror refractive index due to birefringence is therefore Δn/n = 6.38(1) × 10−6.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precision interferometric measurements of mirror birefringence in high-finesse optical resonators

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In particular, the effective optical rotation path length, near index matching, is equal to the Goos-Hänchen shift 9 of the evanescent wave. The limits of this polarimeter, when using a continuous-wave laser locked to a stable high-finesse cavity, should match sensitivity measurements for linear birefringence (3x10 -13 rad) 10 , which is several orders of magnitude more sensitive than current chiral detection limits 7 , transforming the power of chiral sensing in many fields.…”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Evanescent-wave and ambient chiral sensing by signal-reversing cavity ringdown polarimetry

Sofikitis

Bougas

Katsoprinakis

et al. 2014

Nature

128

137

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Maxwell's equations in isotropic optically active media. In particular, the effective optical rotation path length, near index matching, is equal to the Goos-Hänchen shift 9 of the evanescent wave. The limits of this polarimeter, when using a continuous-wave laser locked to a stable high-finesse cavity, should match sensitivity measurements for linear birefringence (3x10 -13 rad) 10 , which is several orders of magnitude more sensitive than current chiral detection limits 7 , transforming the power of chiral sensing in many fields.

show abstract

“…To exploit the full potential of high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavities, the control of polarization eigenmodes is essential. Examples range from cavity-enhanced polarimetry [30][31][32] and cavity ring-down spectroscopy…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency splitting of polarization eigenmodes in microscopic Fabry–Perot cavities

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We study the frequency splitting of the polarization eigenmodes of the fundamental transverse mode in CO 2 laser-machined, high-finesse optical Fabry-Perot cavities and investigate the influence of the geometry of the cavity mirrors. Their highly reflective surfaces are typically not rotationally symmetric but have slightly different radii of curvature along two principal axes. We observe that the eccentricity of such elliptical mirrors lifts the degeneracy of the polarization eigenmodes. The impact of the eccentricity increases for smaller radii of curvature. A model derived from corrections to the paraxial resonator theory is in excellent agreement with the measurements, showing that geometric effects are the main source of the frequency splitting of polarization modes for the type of microscopic cavity studied here. By rotating one of the mirrors around the cavity axis, the splitting can be tuned. In the case of an identical differential phase shift per mirror, it can even be eliminated, despite a nonvanishing eccentricity of each mirror. We expect our results to have important implications for many experiments in cavity quantum electrodynamics, where Fabry-Perot cavities with small mode volumes are required. [33,34] to applications in quantum information processing, such as the efficient and coherent coupling of atomic states to the polarization of single photons [35]. The latter requires degeneracy of the polarization eigenmodes, which has been achieved for Fabry-Perot cavities built from superpolished mirror substrates [36]. Microfabricated cavities, however, can have increased frequency splittings between polarization eigenmodes, as was first observed in CO 2 laser-machined resonators [10,20]. If the splitting is on the order of the linewidth of the cavity, there can be detrimental effects on all kinds of experiments [37][38][39]. There are two strategies for dealing with the splitting in cavities: to minimize it until it becomes negligible, or to increase it such that the two polarization modes are well separated [38]. In either case, it is necessary to understand and control this splitting.Two potential sources of the splitting of polarization eigenmodes in a Fabry-Perot cavity can be distinguished. The first one is birefringence of the mirror materials, usually attributed to mechanical stress [39,40]. Combined with a finite penetration depth, this leads to a polarization-dependent phase shift upon reflection. The second source is directly related to the cavity geometry. Its existence is not evident from the usual paraxial resonator theory, in which the cavity field and its resonances are described by a scalar mode function that is independent of the polarization. The paraxial theory does describe the polarization-independent splitting of higher-order transverse modes of equal order in a cavity with elliptical mirrors, but it cannot account for an additional splitting of each of these modes into a doublet via the polarization degree of freedom. Any splitting of the polarization modes thus has to originat...

show abstract

Shot-noise-limited measurement of sub–parts-per-trillion birefringence phase shift in a high-finesse cavity

Cited by 48 publications

References 24 publications

Precision interferometric measurements of mirror birefringence in high-finesse optical resonators

Precision interferometric measurements of mirror birefringence in high-finesse optical resonators

Evanescent-wave and ambient chiral sensing by signal-reversing cavity ringdown polarimetry

Frequency splitting of polarization eigenmodes in microscopic Fabry–Perot cavities

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About