English

Characterization of the Vacuum Birefringence Polarimeter at BMV: Dynamical Cavity Mirror Birefringence

Instrumentation and Detectors 2019-01-08 v2 Optics

Abstract

We present the current status and outlook of the optical characterization of the polarimeter at the Bir\'{e}fringence Magn\'etique du Vide (BMV) experiment. BMV is a polarimetric search for the QED predicted anisotropy of vacuum in the presence of external electromagnetic fields. The main challenge faced in this fundamental test is the measurement of polarization ellipticity on the order of 1015{10^{-15}} induced in linearly polarized laser field per pass through a magnetic field having an amplitude and length B2L=100T2m{B^{2}L=100\,\mathrm{T}^{2}\mathrm{m}}. This challenge is addressed by understanding the noise sources in precision cavity-enhanced polarimetry. In this paper we discuss the first investigation of dynamical birefringence in the signal-enhancing cavity as a result of cavity mirror motion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.10409,
  title  = {Characterization of the Vacuum Birefringence Polarimeter at BMV: Dynamical Cavity Mirror Birefringence},
  author = {M. T. Hartman and R. Battesti and C. Rizzo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.10409},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

To appear in the 2019 CPEM special issue of IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement