2011/05/02 by Michael Britzger, Daniel Friedrich, Stefanie Kroker +6
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Absorption (acoustics) #Coupling (piping) #Dielectric #Diffraction #Diffraction grating #Geophysics and Sensor Technology #Grating #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Optical cavity #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Resonator #Transmission (telecommunications) #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1364/oe.19.014964
arxiv created 2011/05/02 · openalex publication_date 2011/07/20 · arxiv updated 2015/05/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We demonstrate the optical coupling of two cavities without light transmission through a substrate. As the all-reflective coupling component, we use a dielectric low-efficiency 3-port diffraction grating. In contrast to a conventional transmissive coupling component, such an all-reflective coupler avoids all thermal effects that are associated with light absorption in the substrate. An all-reflective scheme for cavity coupling is of interest in the field of gravitational wave detection. In such detectors light that is resonantly enhanced inside the so-called power-recycling cavity is coupled to (kilometre-scale) Fabry-Perot resonators representing the arms of a Michelson interferometer. We realized such an all-reflective coupling in a table-top experiment. Our findings are in qualitative agreement with the theoretical model incorporating the characteristics of the 3-port grating used, and therefore encourage the application of all-reflective cavity couplers in future gravitational wave detectors.