Diffraction-limited Fabry-Perot cavity in the near concentric regime

Abstract

Nearly concentric optical cavities can be used to prepare optical fields with a very small mode volume. We implement an anaclastic design of such a cavity that significantly simplifies mode matching to the fundamental cavity mode. The cavity is shown to have diffraction-limited performance for a mode volume of ≈104λ3. This is in sharp contrast with the behavior of cavities with planoconcave mirrors, where aberrations significantly decrease the coupling of the input mode to the fundamental mode of the cavity and increase the coupling to the higher-order modes. We estimate the related cavity quantum electrodynamics parameters and show that the proposed cavity design allows for strong coupling without a need for high finesse or small physical-cavity volume.