Parth Gudhka, Laser Spectroscopy using Fabry-Perot Interferometer

Laser Spectroscopy using Fabry-Perot

Interferometers (November 2014)
Parth Gudhka

AbstractLaser spectroscopy is useful in understanding how

monochromatic a laser beam is, which is further useful in many
applications particularly communications. There are many
methods of doing this but perhaps one that gives a very high
resolution optical spectroscopy is done using a Fabry-Perot
etalon. Here, an attempt has been made to explain the theory
behind the Fabry-Perot etalon spectroscopy and explain its
advantages and limitations.
Index TermsFabry Perot Etalon/Interferometer

I. INTRODUCTION

HE Fabry-Perot etalon is used widely for high-resolution

spectroscopy. There are other methods of spectroscopy
too including the delayed self-heterodyne interferometer
which claims to achieve ultra-narrow linewidth measurement.
A laser has a finite linewidth, because of spontaneous
emissions which are not always in phase with the stimulated
emissions and hence cause a finite spread, and the electron
distribution cannot be made infinitesimally confined to a
particular energy level. Schawlow and Tones gave a lower
limit for the linewidth of a laser. [1]

II. THEORY
A. The Fabry-Perot Etalon
The Fabry-Perot interferometer consists of a pair of parallel
partially reflecting mirrors with reflectance R whereas the
Fabry-Perot etalon is a plane-parallel plate of solid
transparent material with reflecting surfaces on both sides.
Both perform similar functions, hence understanding either
will lead to an understanding of how spectroscopy is done.
Consider Figure 1. A plane wave is incident at an angle
to the normal. As a result of multiple reflections at the two
ends, an infinite number of partial waves are produced each
with some phase delay. The phase delay can be obtained from
Figure 2 as,

If this phase delay is an integer multiple of 2, then this plane

wave experiences constructive interference for all the partial
waves. We shall come back to this later. We have infinite
such reflections within the etalon for both the reflected waves
B1, B2, Bn and the transmitted waves A1, A2, An. Each
reflection and transmission is scaled by the respective
reflection coefficient and transmission coefficient. We get an
infinite geometric series and the summation gives the total
intensity of the wave reflected and transmitted. The fraction
of the incident wave that is transmitted can be obtained on
further calculation to be,

It
(1 R) 2

I i (1 R) 2 4 R sin 2 ( / 2)
The transmission plots are shown in Figure 3 for different
values of R, which is the product of the reflection coefficient
at the two surfaces. We can observe that the closer the
reflection coefficient is to 1, the better frequency selectivity
we have, and the better the resolution of the spectrometer.
III. APPLICATION TO SPECTROSCOPY
The transmitted frequency intensitys dependence on the
length of the etalon can be used to selectively filter out
narrow spectral regions at different lengths of the etalon. In
place of the etalon, an interferometer can be used, with one
mirror stationary and the other a variable position mirror that
can be adjusted very finely to pass selective wavelengths. This

4nl cos

Fig. 1. Multiple-reflection model of the Fabry-Perot Etalon. [2]

Manuscript received November 3, 2014.

Parth Gudhka is a student at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar,
Gujarat, India 382421 (e-mail: parthgudhka@iitgn.ac.in)

Parth Gudhka, Laser Spectroscopy using Fabry-Perot Interferometer

selective wavelength can be swept across the entire linewidth

v1 / 2

v
c

F
2nl cos F

where F is defined as the etalon finesse. F quantifies how

selective the etalon can be in filtering out a particular
frequency of an incident wave. It turns out from the definition
of the finesse that as the reflection coefficient tends towards
1, we can have extremely good finesse, and hence resolution.
This can be observed in Figure 3.
IV. CONCLUSION

Fig. 2. Path length difference between successive reflections in the Fabry-Perot

etalon. [2]

Hence, given certain specifications such as the estimated

linewidth of interest and the separation between the laser
oscillation modes, we can design a Fabry-Perot interferometer
with certain finesse and separation between the mirrors so
that spectroscopy is achieved.
We have not considered losses within the cavity, which will
lead to minor changes in the expressions.

REFERENCES
[1]
[2]

Fig. 3. Theoretical transmission plot of a Fabry-Perot etalon. [2]

of the laser, and hence we can obtain the line spread of the
laser.
The change in the resonance frequency of a transmission peak
with a variation in the length dl of the interferometer can be
quantified as

dv
dl

,
v
( / 2 n )
where v is the intermode separation, corresponding to the
separation in frequency between the peaks of the transmission
characteristics. The constraint is that the width of the
transmission peak has to be small compared to the spectral
variation of the optical beam to be analyzed, otherwise an
accurate representation of the spectral content of the beam
will not be possible.
To find the width of the transmission peak, we find the phase
delay 1 / 2 such that the transmission is half that of the peak
value. This is found from the solution to the equation,
2

sin (

1 / 2 2m
2

(1 R) 2
)
4R

The frequency separation v1 / 2 corresponding to the phase

delay

1 / 2 can then be found out to be

A. L. Schawlow and C. H. Townes, Infrared and optical masers, Phys.

Rev. 112 (6), 1940 (1958)
Yariv, A., Pochi, Y., Photonics, 6th ed., Oxford University Press, 2007,
Chapter 4