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Free keywords:
Physics, Optics, physics.optics
Abstract:
We report on the first demonstration of a fully suspended 10m Fabry-Perot
cavity incorporating a waveguide grating as the coupling mirror. The cavity was
kept on resonance by reading out the length fluctuations via the
Pound-Drever-Hall method and employing feedback to the laser frequency. From
the achieved finesse of 790 the grating reflectivity was determined to exceed
99.2% at the laser wavelength of 1064\,nm, which is in good agreement with
rigorous simulations. Our waveguide grating design was based on tantala and
fused silica and included a ~20nm thin etch stop layer made of Al2O3 that
allowed us to define the grating depth accurately during the fabrication
process. Demonstrating stable operation of a waveguide grating featuring high
reflectivity in a suspended low-noise cavity, our work paves the way for the
potential application of waveguide gratings as mirrors in high-precision
interferometry, for instance in future gravitational wave observatories.