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Opto-mechanical noise cancellation

Conor M Mow-Lowry

Published Jan 1, 2002• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The experiments presented in this thesis investigate the interaction between radiation and an optical cavity, in which one mirror of the cavity is mounted on a flexure which could be moved by radiation pressure. The cavity was shown to exhibit non-linear behaviour with high input power. The radiation pressure force was shown to change the mechanical resonance frequency of the moveable mirror. Motion was induced through amplitude modulation of a high power input beam and the extent of this motion measured using the cavity control loop. To demonstrate the way quantum correlations could be used to beat the SQL, the laser light incident on the cavity was prepared, using classical modulation techniques, with classical correlations between the quadratures that cause shot noise and radiation pressure noise. A level of modulation much higher than the quantum level was used to make the cancellation effects more visible. The effect of radiation pressure induced motion was cancelled by the addition of correlated frequency modulation. The input amplitude was then modulated by a white noise source. The resulting noise was partially cancelled when the same white noise source was used to drive the frequency modulator with a dierent phase. This cancellation demonstrably improved the signal to noise ratio of a signal injected into the system.

DOI
10.25911/5d7a28bb9d380

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The experiments presented in this thesis investigate the interaction between radiation and an optical cavity, in which one mirror of the cavity is mounted on a flexure which could be moved by radiation pressure. The cavity was shown to exhibit non-linear behaviour with high input power. The radiation pressure force was shown to change the mechanical resonance frequency of the moveable mirror. Motion was induced through amplitude modulation of a high power input beam and the extent of this motion measured using the cavity control loop. To demonstrate the way quantum correlations could be used to beat the SQL, the laser light incident on the cavity was prepared, using classical modulation techniques, with classical correlations between the quadratures that cause shot noise and radiation pressure noise. A level of modulation much higher than the quantum level was used to make the cancellation effects more visible. The effect of radiation pressure induced motion was cancelled by the addition of correlated frequency modulation. The input amplitude was then modulated by a white noise source. The resulting noise was partially cancelled when the same white noise source was used to drive the frequency modulator with a dierent phase. This cancellation demonstrably improved the signal to noise ratio of a signal injected into the system.
Radiation pressure exerted by light in interferometric measurements is responsible for displacements of mirrors which appear as an additional back-action noise and limit the sensitivity of the measurement. We experimentally study these effects by monitoring in a very highfinesse optical cavity the displacements of a mirror with a sensitivity at the 10-20 m/√Hz level. This unique sensitivity is a step towards the first observation of the fundamental quantum effects of radiation pressure and the resulting standard quantum limit in interferometric measurements. Our experiment may become a powerful facility to test quantum noise reduction schemes, and we already report the first experimental demonstration of a back-action noise cancellation. Using a classical radiation-pressure noise to mimic the quantum noise of light, we have observed a drastic improvement of sensitivity both in position and force measurements.
Radiation pressure exerted by light in interferometric measurements is responsible for displacements of mirrors which appear as an additional back-action noise and limit the sensitivity of the measurement. We experimentally study these effects by monitoring in a very high-finesse optical cavity the displacements of a mirror with a sensitivity at the 10-20m/√Hz level. This unique sensitivity is a step towards the first observation of the fundamental quantum effects of radiation pressure and the resulting standard quantum limit in interferometric measurements. Our experiment may become a powerful facility to test quantum noise reduction schemes, and we already have demonstrated radiation-pressure induced correlations between two optical beams sent into the same moving mirror cavity. Our scheme can be extended down to the quantum level and has applications both in high-sensitivity measurements and in quantum optics.
The limits of optical measurement and control of mechanical motion are set by the quantum nature of light. The familiar shot noise limit can be avoided by increasing the optical power, but at high enough powers, the backaction of the randomly-arriving photons' radiation pressure can grow to become the dominant force on the system. This thesis will describe an experiment showing how backaction limits the laser cooling of macroscopic drumhead membranes, as well as work on how these membranes can be used to upconvert microwave signals to optical frequencies, potentially preserving the fragile quantum state of the upconverted signal.
We present results that are a classical analog to quantum noise cancellation. It is possible to breach the standard quantum limit in an interferometer by the use of squeezing to correlate orthogonal quadratures of quantum noise, causing their effects on the resulting sensitivity to cancel. A laser beam incident on a Fabry-Perot cavity was imprinted with classical, correlated noise in the same quadratures that cause shot noise and radiation pressure noise. Couplings between these quadratures due to a movable mirror, sensitive to radiation pressure, cause the excess classical noise to cancel. This cancellation was shown to improve the signal to noise ratio of an injected signal by approximately a factor of 10.
In order to observe quantum radiation pressure noise and reduce it by measuring the ponderomotively squeezed light on a table-top experiment, we are developing a laser interferometer with Fabry-Perot cavities with very small suspended mirrors. As a preliminary setup, we have constructed a Fabry-Perot cavity of finesse 1300 with a suspended mirror of 20 mg. The cavity was locked stably at low laser power for which the classical radiation pressure caused little effect on the dynamics of the small mirror. For the stable operation of this cavity with higher laser power, a technique to control the motion of the small mirror, especially its yaw motion, is necessary. We describe that the motion can be stabilized through the radiation pressure of light inside the cavity, by controlling the motion of the front mirror of a Fabry-Perot cavity properly.
Quantum mechanics dictates that a measurement always disturb the measured system. In weak continuous measurements, the trade-off between measurement precision and back-action onto the system yields an optimal measurement sensitivity, which is known as the Standard Quantum Limit (SQL) in opto-mechanical measurements, such as gravitational-wave detection. It corresponds to finding the optimal optical power in a compromise between quantum shot noise and quantum radiation-pressure noise. Coherent quantum-noise cancellation (CQNC) aims at overcoming the SQL and reducing back-action noise via the introduction of an effective negative-mass oscillator. In an alloptical set-up, this oscillator is realised by a detuned optical resonator coupled to incoming light with a beam-splitter and a down-conversion interaction and needs to be matched to the measured system in resonance frequency, damping and coupling strengths. This thesis explores the nature of CQNC and a potential all-optical realisation in theory and experiment, with a particular emphasis on the beam-splitter and the down-conversion interaction. Two possible set-ups are compared theoretically and critical parameters determined. Available opto-mechanical devices were characterised and confirmed to be suitable for CQNC. The down-conversion coupling strength gDC is linked to experimentally obtainable parameters. More than 2.3 dB reduction in uncertainty of two-mode squeezed light were observed. The squeezing measurements yielded gDC = 2\pi\times200 kHz at 100mW pump power, which is well within the initially required range and is in agreement with results from two other measurement methods. Optical resonators coupled via a beam-splitter interaction are studied theoretically and experimentally. In this work, the beam-splitter interaction of strength gBS was realised by a wave plate. A simplified experiment design enabled stabilisation of the coupled resonators. Our experimental observations accurately confirmed our theoretical predictions. The observed mode splitting yielded gBS = 2\pi\times235 kHz, within the updated requirements. Losses and a limited measurement strength will be the limiting factors for CQNC. The updated set of parameters, backed by the conducted experiments, paves the way towards a reduction of radiation-pressure noise of up to 4.8 dB.