Cavity Enhanced Interference of Orthogonal Modes in a Birefringent Medium

Abstract

Interference of orthogonal modes in a birefringent crystal is known to lead to interesting physical effects (Solli et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 143906 (2003)). In this paper we show that the cavity with an intra-cavity rotator can enhance the mixing to the extent of normal mode splitting and avoided crossing depending on the orientation of the rotator with respect to the optic axis of the crystal. A high finesse cavity is shown to be capable of resolving small angles. The results are based on direct calculations of the cavity transmissions along with an analysis of its dispersion relation.