MEASUREMENT OF THE RESIDUAL BIREFRINGENCE OF INTERFERENTIAL MIRRORS USING FABRY-PEROT CAVITY

We report on a measurement of the residual birefringence in interferen tial mirrors using a Fabry-Perot cavity. The behavior of a cavity comp rising birefringent mirrors was analyzed in terms of Jones matrix, and examined through an experiment in which the cavity resonant length wa s measured as a function of the relative orientation of the mirrors. T he experimental data agreed well with the model used for the analysis. By measuring the resonant length and the angular position of the cavi ty eigen state for polarization, we could fix all of the parameters re lated to the birefringent miners.