Related papers: Analysis of a four-mirror cavity enhanced Michelso…
The most sensitive measurements of time and space are made with resonant optical cavities, and these measurements are limited by coating thermal noise. The mechanical and optical performance requirements placed on coating materials,…
Atom interferometers are promising tools for precision measurement with applications ranging from geophysical exploration to tests of the equivalence principle of general relativity, or the detection of gravitational waves. Their optimal…
We devise a laser-controlled adaptive optical element which operates intracavity under high intensity radiation. This element substitutes a conventional mechanically deformable mirror and is free of critical heat-sensitive components and…
Interferometers are widely used in imaging technologies to achieve enhanced spatial resolution, but require that the incoming photons be indistinguishable. In previous work, we built and analyzed color erasure detectors which expand the…
Thermal fluctuations of different origin in the substrate and in the coating of optical mirrors produce phase noise in the reflected wave. This noise determines the ultimate stabilization capability of high-Q cavities used as a reference…
Optical phase determination is an important and established tool in diverse fields such as astronomy, biology, or quantum optics. There is increasing interest in using a lower number of total photons. However, different noise sources, such…
Compact interferometers, called phasemeters, make it possible to operate over a large range while ensuring a high resolution. Such performance is required for the stabilization of large instruments dedicated to experimental physics such as…
Ground-based thermal infrared observations face substantial challenges in correcting the predominant background emitted as thermal radiation from the atmosphere and the telescope itself. With the upcoming 40\,m class ELTs, unprecedented…
Experiments were performed with Fabry-Perot optical resonators in vacuum at low temperatures. Mirrors were applied on substrates of various optical materials. The infrared laser with a wavelength of 1.064 microns was used. The pump power at…
The most promising concept for low frequency gravitational wave observatories are laser interferometric detectors in space. It is usually assumed that the noise floor for such a detector is dominated by optical shot noise in the signal…
Fiber Fabry--Perot (FFP) resonators of a few centimeters are optimized as a function of the reflectivity of the mirrors and the dimensions of the intra-cavity waveguide. Loaded quality factor in excess of 10^9, with an optimum of…
We investigate a scheme to enhance the sensitivity in detecting weak variations in a parameter of an optoelectromechanical system by detecting the system response at radio frequencies. We consider a setup, where either one or two mechanical…
Speckle interferometry is an established optical metrology tool for the characterization of rough objects. The raw phase, however, is impaired by the presence of phase singularities, making the unwrapping procedure ambiguous. In a Michelson…
We observed two-photon phase super-resolution in an unbalanced Michelson interferometer with classical Gaussian laser pulses. Our work is a time-reversed version of a two-photon interference experiment using an unbalanced Michelson…
Interferometric gravitational wave antennas are based on Michelson interferometers whose sensitivity to small differential length changes has been enhanced by adding multiple coupled optical resonators. The use of optical cavities is…
Optical interferometers increasingly use single-mode fibers as spatial filters to convert varying wavefront distortion into intensity fluctuations which can be monitored for accurate calibration of fringe amplitudes. Here I propose using an…
These lecture notes discuss two effects which contribute to the reduction of the interference fringe contrast in matter interferometers. The first effect is the shot noise arising from a finite number of atoms used in experiments. Focusing…
We exploit millimeter wave technology to measure the reflection and transmission response of random dielectric media. Our samples are easily constructed from random stacks of identical, sub-wavelength quartz and Teflon wafers. The…
Light-pulse atom interferometers serve as tools for high-precision metrology and are targeting measurements of relativistic effects. This development is facilitated by extended interrogation times and large-momentum-transfer techniques…
Self-heterodyne fiber interferometers have been shown to be capable of stabilizing lasers to ultra-narrow linewidths and present an excellent alternative to high finesse cavities for frequency stabilization. In addition to suppressing…