Abstract

Fundamental limits on reflection losses are set by internal material losses associated with the Urbach tail a band gap and by thermodynamic density fluctuations in fabrication. In materials such as SiO₂ near mirrors, in and TiO₂, these limits are of the order of parts in 10⁹. The current quality of supercavity mirrors, in contrast to that optical fibers, is still far from these limits because of purely technological limitations in contrast to that of surface preparation and in the reduction of impurity levels. Overcoming these would greatly benefit, for example, Fabry–Perot interferometers, ring lasers, and gravitational wave detectors.

© 1994 Optical Society of America

Low-Loss Multilayer Dielectric Mirrors

D. L. Perry
Appl. Opt. 4(8) 987-991 (1965)

Low-loss dielectric mirror with ion-beam-sputtered TiO₂–SiO₂ mixed films

Shiuh Chao, Wen-Hsiang Wang, and Cheng-Chung Lee
Appl. Opt. 40(13) 2177-2182 (2001)

Scattering loss of an optimum pair high reflectance dielectric mirror

Shiuh Chao, Yun-Fa Lin, Jeng-Fung Lin, and Cheng-Chung Lee
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Reflected optical harmonics from dielectric mirrors

Thomas Tsang
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Loss factors of mirrors for a gravitational wave antenna

Shuichi Sato, Shinji Miyoki, Masatake Ohashi, Masa-Katsu Fujimoto, Toshitaka Yamazaki, Mitsuhiro Fukushima, Akitoshi Ueda, Ken-ichi Ueda, Koji Watanabe, Kenji Nakamura, Kazuyuki Etoh, Naoya Kitajima, Kazuhiko Ito, and Izumi Kataoka
Appl. Opt. 38(13) 2880-2885 (1999)