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Published November 2, 2011 | Published
Journal Article Open

Effects of mirror aberrations on Laguerre-Gaussian beams in interferometric gravitational-wave detectors

Abstract

A fundamental limit to the sensitivity of optical interferometers is imposed by Brownian thermal fluctuations of the mirrors' surfaces. This thermal noise can be reduced by using larger beams which "average out" the random fluctuations of the surfaces. It has been proposed previously that wider, higher-order Laguerre-Gaussian modes can be used to exploit this effect. In this paper, we show that susceptibility to spatial imperfections of the mirrors' surfaces limits the effectiveness of this approach in interferometers used for gravitational-wave detection. Possible methods of reducing this susceptibility are also discussed.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Physical Society. Received 29 August 2011; published 2 November 2011. We thank Andreas Freise, Matteo Barsuglia, and Bill Kells for several illuminating discussions. Many thanks to Eric Gustafson and Huan Yang for a careful reading of this manuscript. T. H. and Y. C. are supported by NSF Grants No. PHY-0601459, No. PHY-0653653, CAREER Grant No. PHY-0956189, and the David and Barbara Groce Startup Fund at the California Institute of Technology. R. A. and H.Y. are supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY-0555406. J.M. is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Post Doctoral Fellowship (DP110103472).

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August 19, 2023
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