VM Photonics GmbH is a spin-off of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute; AEI) and Leibniz University Hannover. It offers ultra-precise laser light for optical measurements that is ten times purer and more stable than that of comparable products. Potential applications include measuring gravitational waves, monitoring climate change from space, generating squeezed light and searching for dark matter. The founders are physicists Henning Vahlbruch and Fabian Meylahn.
Forty years after their invention, laser systems based on non-planar ring oscillators (NPROs) are among the most important tools for high-precision physics measurements. They provide the stable and pure laser light that – after further amplification and stabilization – enables the measurement of gravitational waves with instruments such as LIGO and Virgo. Their observations have been revolutionizing astronomy since 2015.
“Our team at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hanover and the Institute for Gravitational Physics at Leibniz University Hanover has decades of experience designing, fabricating, and installing some of the world’s most precise laser systems,” explains Fabian Meylahn, from the Max Planck Institute.
“We came to the conclusion that we could not only manufacture the commercially available NPRO lasers ourselves, but also significantly improve them,” adds Henning Vahlbruch from the university institute. “Our goal was to develop a laser source that delivers more stable and more pure laser light than what is currently available on the market.”
In a recent publication in Review of Scientific Instruments, Vahlbruch and Meylahn have compared the laser source they developed with similar commercial systems. To this end, they developed a test bed to measure the fluctuations in the power and frequency of the laser light. This allowed them to compare the laser sources directly with each other.
Even without the internal power stabilization enabled, a feature available in all devices, the new VM Photonics GmbH development significantly outperformed the other tested devices. With power stabilization enabled, the newly developed source’s laser power fluctuations are far below those of other laser systems.
“This high-precision laser source has a wide range of applications in which it can deliver more accurate results and more precise measurements,” says Benno Willke, co-author of the study and group leader at the institutes. “Potential applications include measuring gravitational waves on Earth and in space, satellite-based gravimetry for monitoring climate change, comparing atomic clocks, searching for dark matter and new elementary particles, and identifying the fingerprints of quantum gravity.”
