Optical rigidity will play an important role in future generations of gravitational wave (GW) interferometers which employ high laser power in order to reach and exceed the standard quantum limit. Several experiments have demonstrated the optical spring effect for very low weight mirror masses. In this paper we extend this to a mass and frequency regime more directly applicable to GW detectors....

A distant mirror leads to a vacuum-induced level shift in a laser-excited atom. This effect has been measured with a single mirror 25 cm away from a single, trapped barium ion. This dispersive action is the counterpart to the mirror's dissipative effect, which has been shown earlier to effect a change in the ion's spontaneous decay [Nature (London) 413, 495 (2001)]]. The experimental data are w...

Multilayer mirrors capable of > 99.9% reflectivity in the far infrared (70-200 microm wavelengths) were constructed using thin silicon etalons separated by empty gaps. Calculations indicate that only three periods are required to produce 99.9% reflectivity because of the large difference between the index of refraction of silicon (3.384) and the vacuum (1). The mirror was assembled from high-pu...

Mirror self-recognition is a hallmark of higher intelligence in humans. Most children recognize themselves in the mirror by 2 years of age. In contrast to human and some great apes, monkeys have consistently failed the standard mark test for mirror self-recognition in all previous studies. Here, we show that rhesus monkeys could acquire mirror-induced self-directed behaviors resembling mirror s...

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a continuous wave (CW) tunable-wavelength fiber laser using self-seeding Fabry-Perot laser diode (FP-LD) without optical amplifier inside gain cavity. By employing a tunable bandpass filter (TBF) and a fiber reflected mirror (FRM) within a gain cavity, the fiber laser can lase a single-longitudinal wavelength due to the self-seeding operation. The propo...

A high efficiency dye-doped cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) is demonstrated by optimizing the dye concentration and using an electrically tunable nematic liquid crystal (NLC) phase retarder. The state of polarization of laser emission in CLC lasers, contrary to our expectations, due to the refractive index mismatch at the boundaries is not exactly circular. A double-cell structure including a ...

The focusability of a long l)ulse XeCI excimer laser has been improved using confocal positive branch unstable resonators where the outcoupling is done through the convex mirror. For the outcoupler different reflectivity profiles are used. A near diffraction limited output beam is obtained from hard edge unstable resonators. A beam with only one central s1)ot in the focus of a lens can be obtai...

Stable and reliable operation demonstrated and studied with a 10 Hz Ti:sapphire laser system proves the suitability of the double-pulse non-normal incidence pumping geometry for table-top high repetition soft x-ray lasers (SXRL) on the way to applications. In this experiment a nickel-like molybdenum 4d1S0 − 4p1P1 transient collisional soft X-ray laser at 18.9 nm is investigated which is pumped ...

Thermodynamical (TD) fluctuations of temperature in mirrors may produce surface fluctuations not only through thermal expansion in mirror body [1] but also through thermal expansion in mirror coating. We analyze the last " surface " effect which can be larger than the first " volume " one due to larger thermal expansion coefficient of coating material and smaller effective volume. In particular...

Thermodynamical (TD) fluctuations of temperature in mirrors may produce surface fluctuations not only through thermal expansion in mirror body [1] but also through thermal expansion in mirror coating. We analyze the last " surface " effect which can be larger than the first " volume " one due to larger thermal expansion coefficient of coating material and smaller effective volume. In particular...