Feedback-free optical cavity with self-resonating mechanism

TL;DR

This paper presents a high finesse optical cavity that operates without active feedback, achieving high stored power and stability, which could revolutionize applications like photon sources and spectroscopy.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a self-resonating optical cavity with high finesse and stable operation without active feedback, a novel approach in optical cavity technology.

Findings

Finesse of 394,000 measured

Stored power of 2.52 kW achieved

Stable operation for over two hours

Abstract

We demonstrated the operation of a high finesse optical cavity without utilizing an active feedback system to stabilize the resonance. The effective finesse, which is a finesse including the overall system performance, of the cavity was measured to be $394,000 \pm 10,000$, and the laser power stored in the cavity was $2.52 \pm 0.13$ kW, which is approximately 187,000 times greater than the incident power to the cavity. The stored power was stabilized with a fluctuation of $1.7 \%$, and we confirmed continuous cavity operation for more than two hours. This result has the potential to trigger an innovative evolution for applications that use optical resonant cavities such as compact photon sources with laser-Compton scattering or cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy.