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Published September 10, 2007 | public
Journal Article Open

Generation of a flat-top laser beam for gravitational wave detectors by means of a nonspherical Fabry-Perot resonator

Abstract

We have tested a new kind of Fabry-Perot long-baseline optical resonator proposed to reduce the thermal noise sensitivity of gravitational wave interferometric detectors--the "mesa beam" cavity--whose flat top beam shape is achieved by means of an aspherical end mirror. We present the fundamental mode intensity pattern for this cavity and its distortion due to surface imperfections and tilt misalignments, and contrast the higher order mode patterns to the Gauss-Laguerre modes of a spherical mirror cavity. We discuss the effects of mirror tilts on cavity alignment and locking and present measurements of the mesa beam tilt sensitivity.

Additional Information

© 2007 Optical Society of America. Received 23 February 2007; revised 6 July 2007; accepted 11 July 2007; posted 13 July 2007 (Doc. ID 80265); published 7 September 2007. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation, and operates under cooperative agreement PHY-0107417. This paper has LIGO document LIGO-P050025-00-D. The authors also thank G. Billingsley for mirror metrology, B. Abbott and P. Russell for electronics, and C. Vanni for machining pieces of apparatus. We acknowledge the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) for financial support.

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August 22, 2023
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October 16, 2023