Optical characterization of a fiber Fabry-Perot cavity: precision measurement of intra-cavity loss, transmittance, and reflectance.

ABSTRACT

We propose and demonstrate a method for characterizing the individual mirror parameters of a fiber Fabry-Perot cavity (FFPC). By measuring the reflection and transmission spectra of the FFPC with an incident laser propagating from the two mirrors of the FFPC and considering several normal or unique losses, the transmittance, reflectance, and intra-cavity loss of the individual mirrors can be determined. Due to the intrinsic limitation of cavity length, traditional powerful methods, such as the cavity ring-down technique, are not applicable to FFPCs for characterizing the parameters of individual mirrors. This scheme provides a dependable method for assessing FFPC mirrors and provides a significant capability for the implementation of strong-coupling cavity quantum electrodynamics based on FFPCs.