Abstract

Michelson interferometers with recycling and arm cavities [1,2] are the currently preferred configuration for interferometric gravitational wave detectors. Recently, we have investigated a zero-area Sagnac interferometer [3] as an alternative to the Michelson-Fabry-Perot configuration, and have shown that the delay-line Sagnac interferometer has several advantages over Michelson designs for gravitational wave detection. The Sagnac interferometer is insensitive to DC mirror displacement, laser frequency variation, arm-reflectance imbalance, and induced birefringence, and thus may be easier to control [3], We have extended the analysis of the delay-line Sagnac in [3], and calculated the frequency response of a variety of Sagnac interferometer topologies, including an interferometer with multi-turn, multipass delay-lines, power, signal and dual-recycling, and interferometers with resonant cavity arms.

© 1996 Optical Society of America