Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In optics, a Fabry–Pérot interferometer (FPI) or etalon is an optical cavity made from two parallel reflecting surfaces (i.e.: thin mirrors). Optical waves can pass through the optical cavity only when they are in resonance with it. It is named after Charles Fabry and Alfred Perot, who developed the instrument in 1899.
Jean-Baptiste Alfred Perot (French:; 3 November 1863 – 28 November 1925) was a French physicist. Together with his colleague Charles Fabry he developed the Fabry–Pérot interferometer in 1899. [1] [2] The French Academy of Sciences awarded him the Janssen Medal for 1912. [3] The Royal Society awarded Fabry and Perot the Rumford medal in 1918.
Marie Paul Auguste Charles Fabry ForMemRS [1] [2] (French: [maʁi pɔl oɡyst ʃaʁl fabʁi]; 11 June 1867 – 11 December 1945) was a French physicist working on optics. [3] [4] Together with Alfred Pérot he invented the Fabry–Pérot interferometer. He is also one of the co-discoverers of the ozone layer.
Figure 1. The light path through a Michelson interferometer.The two light rays with a common source combine at the half-silvered mirror to reach the detector. They may either interfere constructively (strengthening in intensity) if their light waves arrive in phase, or interfere destructively (weakening in intensity) if they arrive out of phase, depending on the exact distances between the ...
English: Transient analysis of a silicon (n = 3.4) Fabry–Pérot etalon at normal incidence. The upper animation is for etalon thickness chosen to give maximum transmission while the lower animation is for thickness chosen to give minimum transmission.
In the simplest case, the laser's optical cavity is formed by two opposed plane (flat) mirrors surrounding the gain medium (a plane-parallel or Fabry–Pérot cavity). The allowed modes of the cavity are those where the mirror separation distance L is equal to an exact multiple of half the wavelength, λ :
During the Initial and Enhanced LIGO phases, a half-length interferometer operated in parallel with the main interferometer. For this 2 km interferometer, the Fabry–Pérot arm cavities had the same optical finesse, and, thus, half the storage time as the 4 km interferometers. With half the storage time, the theoretical strain sensitivity was ...
In 2015, another application of the Michelson interferometer, LIGO, made the first direct observation of gravitational waves. [2] That observation confirmed an important prediction of general relativity, validating the theory's prediction of space-time distortion in the context of large scale cosmic events (known as strong field tests).