Generation of very high-order high purity Gaussian modes via spatial light modulation

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate the conversion of a fundamental ${\text{TEM}}_{00}$ laser mode at 1064\,nm to higher order Hermite-Gaussian modes (HG) of arbitrary order via a commercially available liquid crystal Spatial Light Modulator (SLM). We particularly studied the ${\text{HG}}_{5,5}/{\text{HG}}_{10,10}/{\text{HG}}_{15,15}$ modes. A two-mirror plano-spherical cavity filters the higher-order modes spatially. We analyze the cleaned modes via a three-mirror diagnosis cavity and measure a mode purity of 96/93/78\% and a conversion efficiency of 6.6\%/3.7\%/1.7\% respectively. The generated high-purity Hermite-Gaussian modes can be employed for the mitigation of mirror thermal noise in optical cavities for both optical clocks and gravitational wave (GW) detectors. HG modes are then converted into high order LG modes which can be of particular interest in cold atom physics.

arXiv comment9 pages, 8 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Power coupling losses for misaligned and mode-mismatched higher-order Hermite-Gauss modes
• Experimental demonstrations of alignment and mode matching in optical cavities with higher-order Hermite-Gauss modes
• Misalignment and mode mismatch error signals for higher-order Hermite-Gauss modes from two sensing schemes
• On the noise effect of test mass surface roughness in spaceborne gravitational wave detectors
• Beam displacement tolerances on a segmented mirror for higher-order Hermite-Gauss modes
• Thermal Deformation Reduction in High-Power Interferometry with Higher-Order Laser Modes