Bidirectional Internal Squeezing for Gravitational-Wave Detectors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a bidirectional internal squeezing scheme for gravitational-wave detectors that minimizes quantum noise and offers design flexibility, validated through analytical and numerical methods.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel bidirectional internal squeezing approach that saturates quantum noise bounds and enhances detector performance, with practical implementation considerations.

Findings

Saturates the lowest known quantum noise bounds from internal optical dissipation.

Quantum noise spectral density becomes independent of certain transmissivities at high frequencies.

Mode healing in the signal-extraction cavity can suppress mismatch losses.

Abstract

We present a bidirectional internal squeezing scheme for gravitational-wave detectors and show that it saturates the lowest known lower bounds on quantum noise from internal optical dissipation. The scheme uses two optical parametric amplification stages inside the signal-extraction cavity that act on intra-cavity fields propagating in opposite directions. Thereby, most vacuum fields entering the interferometer are squeezed, while the signal and internal vacuum fields are amplified so that loss in the readout path adds no further noise. We show that the resulting signal-referred quantum noise spectral density is independent of the arm-cavity input and signal-extraction transmissivities at high frequencies, opening design freedom to mitigate technical constraints and radiation-pressure noise. We derive these results analytically, compare them with other internal squeezing and amplification schemes, and validate the full quantum-noise spectrum through numerical simulations. We also assess realistic implementations, including dissipation mechanisms and transverse mode mismatch introduced by the scheme, and find that 'mode healing' in the signal-extraction cavity can suppress mismatch losses. These results identify bidirectional internal squeezing as a possible upgrade path for gravitational-wave observatories such as LIGO, and the scheme may also benefit future observatories and other interferometry experiments.