Sub-kelvin measurement of silicon thermal expansion with a Fabry-P\'erot cavity stabilized laser

Abstract

In this letter, we report the measurement of the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of single-crystal silicon from 655 mK to 16 K using an ultra-stable laser based on a single-crystal silicon Fabry-Perot cavity. Below 1 K temperatures, the CTE is in the $10^{-13}$ K$^{-1}$ range with a lowest point at $\boldsymbol{\alpha(}655$ mK$ \boldsymbol{)=} 3.5 \pm 0.4 \times 10^{-13}$ K$^{-1}$. We produce a theoretical model based on Debye and Einstein models to effectively approximate the CTE measured in this temperature range. This is the lowest-temperature CTE measurement of silicon to date, as well as the lowest operating temperature for an ultra-stable Fabry-Perot cavity for laser frequency stabilization.