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 article, 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.

10 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (5)

• LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
• Higher-order Laguerre-Gauss mode generation and interferometry for gravitational wave detectors
• Experimental demonstration of higher-order Laguerre-Gauss mode interferometry
• Optimal Light Beams and Mirror Shapes for Future LIGO Interferometers
• The dependence of test-mass thermal noises on beam shape in gravitational-wave interferometers

Cited by in corpus (11)

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• The next detectors for gravitational wave astronomy
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• Misalignment and mode mismatch error signals for higher-order Hermite-Gauss modes from two sensing schemes
• A New Class of Optical Beams for Large Baseline Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors
• On fundamental diffraction limitation of finesse of a Fabry-Perot cavity
• Folding Gravitational-Wave Interferometers
• On the noise effect of test mass surface roughness in spaceborne gravitational wave detectors
• A potential third-generation gravitational-wave detector based on autocorrelative weak-value amplification
• Trade-off between quantum and thermal fluctuations in mirror coatings yields improved sensitivity of gravitational-wave interferometers