A small mode volume tunable microcavity: Development and characterization

We report the realization of a spatially and spectrally tunable air-gap Fabry-Pérot type microcavity of high finesse and cubic-wavelength-scale mode volume. These properties are attractive in the fields of opto-mechanics, quantum sensing, and foremost cavity quantum electrodynamics. The major design...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied physics letters 2014-09, Vol.105 (12)
Main Authors: Greuter, Lukas, Starosielec, Sebastian, Najer, Daniel, Ludwig, Arne, Duempelmann, Luc, Rohner, Dominik, Warburton, Richard J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air gaps
Applied physics
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide lasers
Fused silica
Laser ablation
Laser beams
Opto-mechanics
Quantum electrodynamics
Quantum theory
Radius of curvature
Silicon dioxide
Variation
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Summary:We report the realization of a spatially and spectrally tunable air-gap Fabry-Pérot type microcavity of high finesse and cubic-wavelength-scale mode volume. These properties are attractive in the fields of opto-mechanics, quantum sensing, and foremost cavity quantum electrodynamics. The major design feature is a miniaturized concave mirror with atomically smooth surface and radius of curvature as low as 10 μm produced by CO2 laser ablation of fused silica. We demonstrate excellent mode-matching of a focussed laser beam to the microcavity mode and confirm from the frequencies of the resonator modes that the effective optical radius matches the physical radius. With these small radii, we demonstrate wavelength-size beam waists. We also show that the microcavity is sufficiently rigid for practical applications: in a cryostat at 4 K, the root-mean-square microcavity length fluctuations are below 5 pm.
ISSN:0003-6951
1077-3118
DOI:10.1063/1.4896415