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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Observation of radiation-pressure effects and back-action cancellation in interferometric measurements

A. Heidmann, T. Caniard, P. Verlot, Tristan Briant, P.-F. Cohadon

Published Jan 8, 2008• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1117/12.763304

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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.
We have developed an experiment of ultrasensitive interferometric measurement of small displacements based on a high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity. We describe recent progress in our experimental setup in order to reach a sensitivity better than 10-20 m/√Hz. This unique sensitivity is a step towards the first observation of radiation pressure effects 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 either in position or 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.
We have developed an experiment of ultrasensitive interferometric measurement of small displacements based on a high-finesse Fabry-Perot cavity. We have observed the internal thermal noise of mirrors and fully characterized their acoustics modes with a sensitivity of 3 × 10 −20 m/Hz 1/2 . This unique sensitivity is a step towards the first observation of the radiation pressure effects and the resulting standard quantum limit in interferometric measurements. Our experiment may become a powerful facility to test quantum noise reduction schemes such as the use of squeezed light or quantum locking of mirrors. As a first result, we present the observation of a cancellation of radiation pressure effects in our cavity. This back-action noise cancellation was first proposed within the framework of gravitational-wave detection with dual resonators, and may drastically improve the sensitivity of such measurements.
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.
We discuss the use of active control to reduce mirrors position fluctuations at the quantum level. Recent experiments have shown that it is possible to reduce the thermal motion of a mirror by cold damping. The mirror motion is measured with an optomechanical sensor based on an high-finesse optical cavity, and corrected by a feedback loop. We show that this approach can be extended to lock the mirror motion at the quantum level and we propose to use this quantum locking technique to reduce the noise in interferometric measurements such as gravitational-waves detectors. We analyze the back-action effects of the optomechanical sensor and show that quantum limits can be transferred from the sensor measurement to the interferometric one. This simple technique allows one to suppress the quantum effects of radiation pressure in the interferometer and to greatly enhance its sensitivity. The effect is furthermore insensitive to losses in the interferometer.
We theoretically investigate quantum measurement noise in a hybrid optomechanical system, focusing on radiation pressure back action and its impact on force sensing. The setup consists of an optomechanical cavity with a movable mirror, a fixed semi transparent mirror, an ensemble of quantum dots (QD) coupled to the cavity mode, and an intracavity optical parametric amplifier (OPA). We show how the QD induced response, together with the system nonlinearity, modifies the noise spectral density and thereby improves the force measurement sensitivity. In this setup, coherent quantum noise cancellation (CQNC) can completely remove the back action noise. In addition, increasing the OPA pump gain enables sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit (SQL) at reduced laser power. These combined effects allow weak force sensing beyond the SQL.