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Updated: Nov 3, 2025

The Generation of Higher-order Laguerre-Gauss Optical Beams for High-precision Interferometry
Published on: August 12, 2013
Power coupling losses for misaligned and mode-mismatched higher-order Hermite-Gauss modes
Abstract:
This paper analytically and numerically investigates misalignment and mode-mismatch-induced power coupling coefficients and losses as a function of Hermite-Gauss (HG) mode order. We show that higher-order HG modes are more susceptible to beam perturbations when, for example, coupling into optical cavities: the misalignment and mode-mismatch-induced power coupling losses scale linearly and quadratically with respect to the mode indices, respectively. As a result, the mode-mismatch tolerance for the ${{\rm HG}_{3,3}}$ mode is reduced to a factor of 0.28 relative to the currently used ${{\rm HG}_{0,0}}$ mode. This is a potential hurdle to using higher-order modes to reduce thermal noise in future gravitational-wave detectors.
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