Fabry–Pérot interferometer

In optics, a Fabry–Pérot interferometer or etalon is typically made of a transparent plate

with two reflecting surfaces, or two parallel highly reflecting
mirrors. (Technically the former is an etalon and the latter is an
interferometer, but the terminology is often used inconsistently.)
Its transmission spectrum as a function of wavelength exhibits
peaks of large transmission corresponding to resonances of the
etalon. It is named after Charles Fabry and Alfred Perot.[1]
"Etalon" is from the French étalon, meaning "measuring gauge"
or "standard".

The resonance effect of the Fabry–Pérot interferometer is identical to that used in a dichroic
filter. That is, dichroic filters are very thin sequential arrays of Fabry–Pérot interferometers,
and are therefore characterised and designed using the same mathematics.

Etalons are widely used in telecommunications, lasers and spectroscopy to control and
measure the wavelengths of light. Recent advances in fabrication technique allow the creation
of very precise tunable Fabry–Pérot interferometers.

Theory
A Fabry–Pérot etalon. Light enters the etalon and undergoes multiple internal reflections.

The varying transmission function of an etalon is

caused by interference between the multiple
reflections of light between the two reflecting
surfaces. Constructive interference occurs if the
transmitted beams are in phase, and this corresponds to
a high-transmission peak of the etalon. If the
transmitted beams are out-of-phase, destructive
interference occurs and this corresponds to a
transmission minimum. Whether the multiply-
reflected beams are in-phase or not depends on the
wavelength (λ) of the light (in vacuum), the angle the
light travels through the etalon (θ), the thickness of the etalon (ℓ) and the refractive index of
the material between the reflecting surfaces (n).

The phase difference between each succeeding reflection is given by δ:

If both surfaces have a reflectance R, the transmittance function of the etalon is given by

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Where the coefficient of finesse.

Maximum transmission (Te = 1) occurs when the optical path length
difference (2nl cos θ) between each transmitted beam is an integer multiple of the
wavelength. In the absence of absorption, the
reflectance of the etalon Re is the complement of the
transmittance, such that Te + Re = 1. The
maximum reflectivity is given by:

and this occurs when the path-length difference is

equal to half an odd multiple of the wavelength.

The wavelength separation between adjacent

transmission peaks is called the free spectral range
(FSR) of the etalon, Δλ, and is given by:

where λ0 is the central wavelength of the nearest

transmission peak. The FSR is related to the full-
width half-maximum, δλ, of any one transmission
band by a quantity known as the finesse:

This is commonly approximated (for R > 0.5) by

Etalons with high finesse show sharper transmission peaks with lower minimum transmission
coefficients.

A Fabry–Pérot interferometer differs from a Fabry–Pérot etalon in the fact that the distance ℓ
between the plates can be tuned in order to change the wavelengths at which transmission
peaks occur in the interferometer. Due to the angle dependence of the transmission, the peaks
can also be shifted by rotating the etalon with respect to the beam.

Detailed analysis
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Two beams are shown in the diagram at the right, one
of which (T0) is transmitted through the etalon, and
the other of which (T1) is reflected twice before being
transmitted. At each reflection, the amplitude is
reduced by √R and the phase is shifted by π, while at
each transmission through an interface the amplitude is
reduced by √T. Assuming no absorption,
conservation of energy requires T + R = 1. Define n
as the index of refraction inside the etalon, and n0 as
the index of refraction outside the etalon. Using
phasors to represent the amplitude of the radiation,
the amplitude at point a is unity. The amplitude at
point b will then be

where k = 2πn / λ is the wave number inside the etalon and λ is the vacuum wavelength. At
point c the amplitude will be

The total amplitude of both beams will be the sum of the amplitudes of the two beams
measured along a line perpendicular to the direction of the beam. The amplitude at point b
can therefore be added to an amplitude T1 equal in magnitude to the amplitude at point c, but
has been retarded in phase by an amount k0 ℓ0 where k0 = 2πn0 / λ is the wave number outside
of the etalon. Thus:

where ℓ0 is seen to be:

Neglecting the 2π phase change due to the two reflections, the phase difference between the
two beams is

The relationship between θ and θ0 is given by Snell's law:

So that the phase difference may be written

To within a constant multiplicative phase factor, the amplitude of the mth transmitted beam
can be written as

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The total transmitted beam is the sum of all individual beams

The series is a geometric series whose sum can be expressed analytically. The amplitude can
be rewritten as

The intensity of the beam will be just and, since the incident beam was assumed
to have an intensity of unity, this will also give the transmission function:

Applications
 The most important common applications are as dichroic filters, in which a series of
etalonic layers are deposited on an optical surface by vapor deposition. These optical
filters usually have more exact reflective and pass bands than absorptive filters. When
properly designed, they run cooler than absorptive filters because they can reflect
unwanted wavelengths. Dichroic filters are widely used in optical equipment such as
light sources, cameras and astronomical equipment.

 Telecommunications networks employing wavelength division multiplexing have

add-drop multiplexers with banks of miniature tuned fused silica or diamond etalons.
These are small iridescent cubes about 2 mm on a side, mounted in small high-
precision racks. The materials are chosen to maintain stable mirror-to-mirror
distances, and to keep stable frequencies even when the temperature varies. Diamond
is preferred because it has greater heat conduction and still has a low coefficient of
expansion. In 2005, some telecommunications equipment companies began using
solid etalons that are themselves optical fibers. This eliminates most mounting,
alignment and cooling difficulties.

 An optical wavemeter is a combination of up to five Fabry–Pérot interferometers with

a factor of ten difference in Δλ between any two of them. The beam is made divergent
by a cylindrical lens and the distance between two bright lines is recorded by means
of a CCD camera.

 Laser resonators are often described as Fabry–Pérot resonators, although for many
types of laser the reflectivity of one mirror is close to 100%, making it more similar to
a Gires–Tournois interferometer. Semiconductor diode lasers sometimes use a true
Fabry–Pérot geometry, due to the difficulty of coating the end facets of the chip.

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 Etalons are used to construct single-mode lasers. Without an etalon, a laser will
generally produce light over a wavelength range corresponding to a number of cavity
modes, which are similar to Fabry–Pérot modes. Inserting an etalon into the laser
cavity, with well-chosen finesse and free-spectral range, can suppress all cavity
modes except for one, thus changing the operation of the laser from multi-mode to
single-mode.

 Fabry–Pérot etalons can be used to prolong the interaction length in laser absorption
spectrometry techniques.

 A Fabry–Pérot etalon can be used to make a spectrometer capable of observing the

Zeeman effect, where the spectral lines are far too close together to distinguish with a
normal spectrometer.

 In astronomy an etalon is used to select a single atomic transition for imaging. The
most common is the H-alpha line of the sun. The Ca-K line from the sun is also
commonly imaged using etalons.

 In gravitational wave detection, a Fabry–Pérot cavity is used to store photons for

almost a millisecond while they bounce up and down between the mirrors. This
increases the time a gravitational wave can interact with the light, which results in a
better sensitivity at low frequencies. This principle is used by detectors such as LIGO
and Virgo, which consist of a Michelson interferometer with a Fabry–Pérot cavity
with a length of several kilometer in both arms. Smaller cavities, usually called mode
cleaners, are used for spatial filtering and frequency stabilization of the main laser.