Effects of mirror aberrations on Laguerre-Gaussian beams in interferometric gravitational-wave detectors
Effects of mirror aberrations on Laguerre-Gaussian beams in interferometric gravitational-wave detectors
A fundamental limit to the sensitivity of optical interferometers is imposed by Brownian thermal fluctuations of the mirrors' surfaces. This thermal noise can be reduced by using larger beams which ``average out'' the random fluctuations of the surfaces. It has been proposed previously that wider, higher-order Laguerre-Gaussian modes can be …