Diffraction-limited Fabry-Perot Cavity in the Near Concentric Regime

Abstract

Nearly concentric optical cavities can be used to prepare optical fields with a very small mode volume. We implement an anaclastic design of a such a cavity that significantly simplifies mode matching to the fundamental cavity mode. The cavity is shown to have diffraction-limited performance for a mode volume of $\approx10^4\lambda^3$. This is in sharp contrast with the behavior of cavities with plano-concave mirrors, where aberrations significantly increase the losses in the fundamental mode. We estimate the related cavity QED parameters and show that the proposed cavity design allows for strong coupling without a need for high finesse or small physical cavity volume.