GEOMETRICAL DEPENDENCE OF POLARIZATION IN NEAR-PLANAR RING LASERS

The angular width beta-0 of the transition between the linearly polarised eigenmodes of a planar ring laser and the circularly polarised modes of the nonplanar case depends on the anisotropies delta and chi of the mirror reflectance in amplitude and phase. With supercavity mirrors and with a novel technique for a 20-fold reduction in chi, beta-0 can be reduced to picoradians. An optical lever incorporating this could have three orders of magnitude greater sensitivity than those presently used in various fundamental experiments.