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Abstract

Michelson-type laser-interferometric gravitational-wave (GW) observatories
employ very high light powers as well as transmissively- coupled Fabry-Perot
arm resonators in order to realize high measurement sensitivities. Due to the
absorption in the transmissive optics, high powers lead to thermal lensing and
hence to thermal distortions of the laser beam profile, which sets a limit on
the maximal light power employable in GW observatories. Here, we propose and
realize a Michelson-type laser interferometer with arm resonators whose
coupling components are all-reflective second-order Littrow gratings. In
principle such gratings allow high finesse values of the resonators but avoid
bulk transmission of the laser light and thus the corresponding thermal beam
distortion. The gratings used have three diffraction orders, which leads to the
creation of a second signal port. We theoretically analyze the signal response
of the proposed topology and show that it is equivalent to a conventional
Michelson-type interferometer. In our proof-of-principle experiment we
generated phase-modulation signals inside the arm resonators and detected them
simultaneously at the two signal ports. The sum signal was shown to be
equivalent to a single-output-port Michelson interferometer with
transmissively-coupled arm cavities, taking into account optical loss. The
proposed and demonstrated topology is a possible approach for future
all-reflective GW observatory designs.