English

A Precision Angle Sensor using an Optical Lever inside a Sagnac Interferometer

Optics 2015-05-27 v1

Abstract

We built an ultra low noise angle sensor by combining a folded optical lever and a Sagnac interferometer. The instrument has a measured noise floor of 1.3 prad / Hz^(1/2) at 2.4 kHz. We achieve this record angle sensitivity using a proof-of-concept apparatus with a conservative N=11 bounces in the optical lever. This technique could be extended to reach sub-picoradian / Hz^(1/2) sensitivities with an optimized design.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1102.5354,
  title  = {A Precision Angle Sensor using an Optical Lever inside a Sagnac Interferometer},
  author = {J. M. Hogan and J. Hammer and S. -w. Chiow and S. Dickerson and D. M. S. Johnson and T. Kovachy and A. Sugarbaker and M. A. Kasevich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1102.5354},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

3 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:32:13.893Z