Theoretical and experimental study on vibration sensitivity of a transportable spherical optical reference cavity with multi-channel

Abstract

Optical reference cavities have a significant role in optical and atomic physics. In this paper, we describe a multi-channel transportable spherical optical reference cavity that is rigidly mounted and vibration insensitive. The structure is built based on sphere geometry with four supports arranged symmetrically in a tetrahedral pattern around the optical axis. We theoretically calculate the vibration sensitivities of the multi-channel spherical optical reference cavity. We measure the vibration sensitivities of the spherical optical reference cavity with a simple method that is achieved by measuring the change in the cavity linewidth caused by vibration. The observed vibration sensitivities to accelerations along three directions for the optical reference cavity are approximately (5.1–8.4) × 10−10/g. The theory results of vibration sensitivities are in accordance with experiments. Despite having higher vibration sensitivity than a cubic optical reference cavity, our spherical optical reference cavity has a mass that is approximately half that of a cubic optical reference cavity with the same dimensions. This is beneficial for transportable ultra-stable lasers.