An optical lock-in camera for gravitational wavedetectors

Daniel Brown, Huy Tuong Cao, David Ottaway, Peter Veitch
2020 Optics Express  
Knowledge of the intensity and phase profiles of spectral components in a coherent optical field is critical for a wide range of high-precision optical applications. One of these is interferometric gravitational wave detectors, which rely on the optical beats between these fields for precise control of the experiment. Here we describe an optical lock-in camera and show that it can be used to record optical beats at MHz or greater frequencies with higher spatial and temporal resolution than
more » ... ously possible. This improvement is achieved using a Pockels cell as a fast optical switch to transform each pixel on a sCMOS array into an optical lock-in amplifier. We demonstrate that the optical lock-in camera can record fields with 2 Mpx resolution at 10 Hz with a sensitivity of -62 dBc when averaged over 2s.
doi:10.1364/oe.384754 pmid:32403481 fatcat:odtrrfmszjadbgf6doov7m4gpe