Improved cavity fabrication & cavity characterization

 

 

We are working on the improvement of the laser-machining process for mirror fabrication e.g. to further reduce the achievable mode volume towards fundamental limits. Recent improvements now permit us to realize surface profiles with radii of curvature < 5 µm. To characterize the profiles in quasi-realtime during the machining, we have built a white-light interferometric microscope with Angstrom vertical resolution. In this project we collaborate with Prof. Jakob Reichel.

We also study the effects of finite-size and non-spherical mirror geometry on the performance of high-Finesse cavities. We have implemented a model that permits us to predict the behavior and the mode structure of a cavity from the knowledge of the mirror profile.