Compact, open, and tunable two-dimensional Fabry-Pérot cavity

Abstract

In order to enhance light-matter interactions, optically active material, like a semiconductor, can be embedded into an optical cavity. For small cavity mode volumes, which are required for reaching the strong coupling regime, this is typically done by fabrication of microcavities. While guaranteeing a mechanically stable cavity, these systems lack tunability and are difficult to implement for small samples like van der Waals heterostructures (vdW). Here we present a design for a fully tunable two-dimensional (2D) Fabry-Pérot (FP) cavity which can host any material. The cavity can be freely positioned between two confocal high-NA aspheric lenses which allows for optical transmission microscopy and spectroscopy in real and momentum space. In order to maintain maximal mechanical stability, the cavity mirrors are held in a monolithic titanium frame. A pre-loaded flexure joint allows for manual coarse tuning of the cavity length and mirror parallelism, while three piezo actuators in a tripod layout can be used for fine tuning. We find cavity length fluctuations smaller than 100 pm, measure a finesse of 360 and reach the lowest accessible $m=3$ cavity mode (one electric field antinode within the air gap) at a minimal physical mirror separation of 380 nm. In order to demonstrate the 2D nature of the cavity mode we perform momentum space imaging in transmission as well as spectroscopy to measure the cavity dispersion.