Experimental studies of cryogenic optical resonators

We report on the development of optical resonators operated at cryogenic temperature. a miniature monolithic quartz crystal ring resonator has been operated at liquid helium temperature with a finesse of 330 at the Nd:YAG wavelength 1064 nm. A 3-cm-long Fabry_Perot cavity with mirrors optically contacted to a hollow fused silica spacer has been used for the frequency stabilization of two diode-pumped Nd:YAG lasers. The cavity exhibited a finesses of 240,000 at liquid helium temperature. The root Allan variance of the beat signal of the two lasers locked to two transverse modes of the cryogenic optical resonator (CORE) was below 10 Hz for integration times up to 100 s. Requirements for reaching sub-Hz instability for long times are briefly discussed and it is pointed out that COREs have interesting applications in high-precision fundamental physics experiments.

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