Fabry-Perot microcavity spectra have a fine structure

Abstract

Optical cavities can support many transverse and longitudinal modes. A paraxial scalar theory predicts that the resonance frequencies of these modes cluster in different orders. A non-paraxial vector theory predicts that the frequency degeneracy within these clusters is lifted, such that each order acquires a spectral fine structure, comparable to the fine structure observed in atomic spectra. In this paper, we calculate this fine structure for microcavities and show how it originates from various non-paraxial effects and is co-determined by mirror aberrations. The presented theory, which applies perturbation theory to Maxwell's equations with boundary conditions, proves to be very powerful. It generalizes the effective 1-dimensional description of Fabry-Perot cavities to a 3-dimensional multi-transverse-mode description. It thereby provides new physical insights in several mode-shaping effects and a detailed prediction of the fine structure in Fabry-Perot spectra.

20 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Angular Momenta and Spin-Orbit Interaction of Nonparaxial Light in Free Space
• Frequency splitting of polarization eigenmodes in microscopic Fabry-Perot cavities
• Cavity-enhanced Raman scattering for in situ alignment and characterization of solid-state microcavities
• Observation of microcavity fine structure
• Aberrated optical cavities
• Degenerate Perturbation Theory Describing the Mixing of Orbital Angular Momentum Modes in Fabry-Pérot Cavity Resonators
• Observation of mode-mixing in the eigenmodes of an optical microcavity

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Mode mixing and losses in misaligned microcavities
• Optical microcavity characterization via resonance spectra and modes
• Simulating frequency splittings and loss in Fabry-Pérot cavities