Radiative Thermal Noise for Transmissive Optics in Gravitational-Wave Detectors

Abstract

Radiative losses have traditionally been neglected in the calculation of thermal noise of transmissive optical elements because for the most commonly used geometries they are small compared to losses due to thermal conduction. We explore the use of such transmissive optical elements in extremely noise-sensitive environments such as the arm cavities of future gravitational-wave interferometers. This drives us to a geometry regime where radiative losses are no longer negligible. In this paper we derive the thermo-refractive noise associated with such radiative losses and compare it to other known sources of thermal noise.