Highly reflective low-noise etalon-based meta-mirror

TL;DR

This paper introduces a meta-etalon mirror design combining a metasurface and multilayer stack to significantly reduce thermal noise in high-precision instruments like gravitational wave detectors and laser cavities.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel meta-etalon mirror concept that enables spatial thermal noise weighting, outperforming existing low-temperature solutions in certain applications.

Findings

Reduces thermal noise in gravitational wave detector test masses.

Improves laser frequency stabilization by reducing Allan deviation.

Outperforms room-temperature alternatives for low-noise applications.

Abstract

We present a concept of a mirror for the application in high-reflectivity low-noise instruments such as interferometers. The concept is based on an etalon with a metasurface (meta-etalon) on the front and a conventional multilayer stack on the rear surface. The etalon in combination with the metasurface enables a dedicated spatial weighing of the relevant thermal noise processes and by this a substantial reduction of the overall read out thermal noise. We exemplary illustrate the benefit of the proposed etalon for thermal noise in two applications: The test masses of the Einstein Telescope gravitational wave detector and a single-crystalline cavity for laser frequency stabilization. In the Einstein Telescope the thermal noise of the etalon even at room temperature outperforms existing concepts for operation temperatures at 10K. For the laser stabilization cavity, a reduction of the modified Allan deviation of an order of magnitude is predicted.