4.

4 Green pump power stabilization 67

• variation of the crystal refractive index that leads to the loss of the phase-
matching condition.

• detuning of the OPO cavity respect to the s-polarized light. The OPO cavity
is locked on the p-polarized AUX2 laser line, whereas the 532 nm pump beam
and the generated squeezed vacuum states are in the orthogonal polarization.
Because of the birefringence of the PPKTP nonlinear crystal, the condition in
which the two orthogonal polarization are simultaneously resonant in the OPO
is achieved by offsetting the AUX2 output frequency with respect to the ML
one. Therefore a variation of the nonlinear crystal refraction index causes a loss
of the coresonant condition that results in a detuning of the OPO respect to
the s-polarized light;

• influence on the squeezing ellipse angle that causes disturbance in the coherent
control system for its stabilization.

A theoretical stability requirement for the green power can be calculated exploiting
the analysis presented in [39] that takes into account all the thermal effects. The
result is that the deviation of the green power must be less than 1%, since within this
value the squeezing degree and angle does not significantly change. This analysis is
performed with the pump power set to about an half of the OPO threshold power [44].

4.4.2 Mach Zehnder interferometer

Fig. 4.13 shows a picture of MZ interferometer and its working principle scheme.
This optical element is designed by INFN Napoli group.

Figure 4.13: Left: photo of the MZ interferometer installed on the bench. Right: working principle
of a MZ interferometer.

Referring to the right side of Fig. 4.13, the reflected Er and transmitted Et electric
68 Overview of the squeezing vacuum source

fields can be computed as:

 ∆L

Er = r1 r2 − t1 t2 eı(2π λ +φ) Ein
 ∆L
 (4.1)
Et = ı r1 r2 + t1 t2 eı(2π λ +φ) Ein

where r1 , r2 , t1 , t2 are respectively the the amplitude reflectivities and transmittivity

of the two beam splitters, ∆L is the length difference of the two beam paths, λ is the
wavelength of the incoming field Ein and φ is the Gouy phase at the recombination
point. The MZ used in this squeezer is in the configuration ∆L ≪ zR , where zR is the
Rayleigh length of the incoming beam, therefore the Gouy phase φ can be neglected
in the analysis.
The MZ is designed with equal arms length and with an unbalanced beams power
along each arm; thus that the mean power of the transmitted differs to the one of the
reflected electric field. It is composed by two superpolished mirror M1 and M2 with
reflectivity R > 0.9999 and rms sourface roughness about 0.5 Å and by two two fused
silica beam splitters, S1 , S2 with power reflectivity R1 = R2 = 0.1 for p-polarized
light and R1 = R2 = 0.01 for s-polarized light.
Fig. 4.11 shows the optical layout of the MZ and the MCG installed on the bench.
The half-waveplate (HWP1) before MZ is used to adjust the polarization of its input
electric field and thus to tune the transmitted field amplitude Et . After MZ another
half-waweplate HW P 2 is placed with the aim to readjust its output polarization.
The reflected beam is injected into MCG and used as OPO pump. The pump power
is actively controlled with a piezoelectric actuator attached to one mirror. Acting on
the PZT the difference path length ∆L changes and thus it is possible to stabilize
its output power to fixed value. The error signal is provided by the photodetector
P DM CG2 placed in transmission to the MCG cavity. The loop stabilizes the field
power, i.e. the photodiode output voltage, to a fixed value.
Fig. 4.14 shows the MZ power reflection and power transmission, defined as
RM Z = |Er /Ein |2 and TM Z = |Et /Ein |2 as function of ∆L. These two quantities
are shown both for p and s polarized input field: for p-polarized light the mean re-
mean = 0.82 while for s-polarized light Rmean = 0.98. Left plot shows the
flection is RM Z MZ
measured RM Z for p-polarized light when the difference path length is changed with
a triangular ramp on the piezoelectric actuator. These data are not in agreement
with the expected curve because Ein is not perfectly p-polarized and therefore the
fraction of the light reflected by the MZ interferometer is slightly different than the
one expectedtuned4 . In addition the two measured periods are not perfectly aligned
4
This rotation of the incoming beam polarization was performed to allow the MZ response to be
linear at higher reflected power.