Cavity Enhanced Interference of Orthogonal Modes in a Birefringent Medium

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how a high finesse cavity with an intra-cavity rotator can enhance the interference of orthogonal modes in a birefringent medium, leading to observable phenomena like mode splitting and avoided crossing.

Contribution

It introduces a cavity setup with an intra-cavity rotator to amplify mode mixing effects in birefringent crystals, enabling detailed analysis of mode interactions.

Findings

Cavity with rotator enhances mode mixing effects.

High finesse cavity can resolve small angular differences.

Mode splitting and avoided crossing are observed depending on orientation.

Abstract

Interference of orthogonal modes in a birefringent crystal is known to lead to interesting physical effects (Solli et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 143906 (2003)). In this paper we show that the cavity with an intra-cavity rotator can enhance the mixing to the extent of normal mode splitting and avoided crossing depending on the orientation of the rotator with respect to the optic axis of the crystal. A high finesse cavity is shown to be capable of resolving small angles. The results are based on direct calculations of the cavity transmissions along with an analysis of its dispersion relation.