Fiber Mirror Facility Upgrade for Quantum Optics and Sensing

量子光学和传感光纤镜设施升级

• 批准号: RTI-2022-00470
• 负责人: Sankey(Childress), Jack
• 金额: $ 6.26万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Research Tools and Instruments
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=742956
• 关键词: Fiber; Mirror; Facility; Upgrade; Quantum

Optical cavities vastly enhance light-matter interactions, making them a ubiquitous tool in optics, quantum optics, and sensing. Recently, microscopic "fiber cavities" have emerged, offering significantly higher bandwidth and tighter confinement, thereby boosting these interactions even further. As a result, five of our six core research directions now rely on fiber cavity technology. The requisite fiber mirror substrates are laser-machined in a shared facility at McGill, and, while this system has vaulted our research to the leading edge of several fields, its low tolerances and lack of flexibility now threaten to halt further progress. As such, we request an upgrade that will improve precision, design flexibility, and throughput. Each research area will greatly benefit from this, but two recent breakthroughs in particular present extraordinary opportunities that prompt an immediate upgrade. First, in the field of optomechanics, we have successfully realized a system comprising an ultralow-noise "trampoline" micromechanical sensor within a fiber cavity, whose motion will be dominated by quantum radiation pressure fluctuations over an unprecedented band of frequencies. This quantum-dominated regime heralds the generation of "squeezed" light useful for surpassing the "standard quantum limit" and preparing arbitrary motional quantum states via feedback, enabling fundamental tests of quantum collapse (e.g. due to gravity), and quantum-enhanced sensors for dark matter searches and force microscopy. However, these exciting opportunities require significantly improved fiber mirrors to efficiently out-couple quantum light: we need precisely positioned, ultrasmooth, and near-flat surfaces that we cannot currently fabricate. Second, in the field of radiation dosimetry, we recently patented a tissue-equivalent in vivo fiber-cavity dosimeter with water as the active medium. Our collaboration with Prof. Enger (MUHC) has now observed promising signals in free space water, verified the radiation hardness of our mirror coatings, and developed techniques and a detailed theory for realizing the optimal dosimeter. We know that the targeted sensitivities require mirrors with much larger radius of curvature than is possible in our existing facility. The proposed upgrade -- which notably utilizes almost all of the existing infrastructure -- addresses all of the above issues, while increasing reliability and throughput. It includes motorized stages for multi-shot ablation of arbitrary profiles on multiple fiber tips and automatic profiling during and after ablation, a fiber cleaver with industry-leading angular tolerances to eliminate detrimental misalignment, and all necessary integration hardware. Beyond this, our facility provides fibers to researchers at Harvard, TU Denmark, Korea University, and Alberta. The infrastructure requested here will increase production, flexibility, and reliability, allowing this community to expand.

光学腔大大增强了光 - 物质的相互作用，使它们成为光学，量子光学和传感的无处不在的工具。最近，显微镜“纤维腔”已经出现，提供了更高的带宽和更紧密的限制，从而进一步提高了这些相互作用。结果，我们的六个核心研究方向中有五个依赖于纤维腔技术。必要的光纤镜基板在McGill的共享设施中进行了激光生产，尽管该系统已将我们的研究跃升至几个领域的前沿，但其低公差和缺乏灵活性现在有可能阻止进一步的进展。因此，我们要求进行升级，以提高精度，设计灵活性和吞吐量。每个研究领域都将大大受益，但是最近的两个突破尤其是目前的非凡机会，这些机会立即升级。首先，在光学机械领域，我们成功地实现了一个系统，该系统包括纤维腔内的超高噪声“蹦床”微力传感器，其运动将由量子辐射压力波动主导，而在前所未有的频带上。这种量子主导的政权预示着“挤压”光的产生，可用于超越“标准量子极限”并通过反馈来制备任意的运动量子状态，从而实现量子塌陷的基本测试（例如由于引力），以及用于暗问题和力显微镜的量子增强的传感器。但是，这些激动人心的机会需要显着改善的纤维镜，以有效地超出量子光：我们需要精确定位，超齿和近灯表面，目前无法制造。其次，在辐射剂量测定的领域，我们最近以水作为活性培养基的体内纤维腔体剂量剂量授权。我们与Enger教授（MUHC）的合作现在观察到了自由空间水中有希望的信号，验证了镜像涂层的辐射硬度以及开发的技术以及一种实现最佳剂量计的详细理论。我们知道，靶向灵敏度需要弯曲半径比我们现有设施可能更大的镜子。拟议的升级（尤其是利用了几乎所有现有的基础架构）解决了以上所有问题，同时提高了可靠性和吞吐量。它包括电动阶段，用于在多个光纤尖端上进行任意轮廓的多拍消融，并在消融过程中和之后进行自动分析，带有行业领先的角度公差的剪切肉剂，以消除有害的不对准，以及所有必要的集成硬件。除此之外，我们的设施为哈佛，丹麦，韩国大学和艾伯塔省的研究人员提供了纤维。这里要求的基础设施将提高产量，灵活性和可靠性，从而使该社区扩展。