High-power Fabry-Perot cavities with suspended mirrors are employed in gravitational wave detection. The mirrors in such interferometers are subject to forces and torques that are exerted by light pressure. This article derives a closed-form expression for the static torsional stiffness due to this effect. The torsional stiffness is shown to scale as the fourth power of the beam spot size. In p...

Broadband saturable Bragg reflectors (SBRs) are designed and fabricated by monolithic integration of semiconductor saturable absorbers with broadband Bragg mirrors. The wet oxidation of AlAs creates low-index AlxOy layers for broadband, high-index-contrast AlGaAs/AlxOy or InGaAlP/AlxOy mirrors. SBR mirror designs indicate greater than 99% reflectivity over bandwidths of 294, 466, and 563 nm for...

Since the development of distributed Bragg gratings, high resolution lithography and etching have been applied towards the concentration of light. The most important application of lithographically fabricated microcavities has been for the spectral control over laser emission. Here we describe the opportunities that arise from further miniaturization of laser cavities by using high index contra...

Ultrafast optical excitation with intense mid-infrared and terahertz pulses has emerged as a new tool to control materials dynamically. As most experiments are performed femtosecond pulse excitation, typical lifetimes of light-induced phenomena in solids only few picoseconds. Yet, many scientific applications require longer drive lifetimes. Here, we describe pump - terahertz-probe setup based o...