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Improving the Sensitivity of Planar Fabry–Pérot Cavities via Adaptive Optics and Mode Filtering
Author(s) -
Czuchnowski Jakub,
Prevedel Robert
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
advanced optical materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.89
H-Index - 91
ISSN - 2195-1071
DOI - 10.1002/adom.202001337
Subject(s) - planar , fabry–pérot interferometer , sensitivity (control systems) , optics , zernike polynomials , wavefront , adaptive optics , materials science , mode (computer interface) , optoelectronics , physics , computer science , electronic engineering , wavelength , engineering , computer graphics (images) , operating system
Fabry–Pérot (FP) cavities are fundamental and ubiquitous optical elements frequently used in various sensing applications. Here, the authors introduce a general theoretical framework to study arbitrary light–cavity mode interactions for planar FPs and show how optical aberrations, intrinsic to the interrogating beam or due to imperfect cavities, reduce optical sensitivity by exciting higher‐order spatial modes in the cavity. It is found that particular Zernike aberrations play a dominant role in sensitivity degradation, and that the general loss of sensitivity can be significantly recovered by appropriate wavefront correction or mode filtering. The authors then demonstrate their theoretical findings also experimentally and show that in practice the sensitivity of realistic planar FP micro‐cavity sensors can be improved up to threefold by a synergistic combination of adaptive optics and passive mode filtering.