Permanent magnets for Faraday rotators inspired by the design of the magic sphere.

Faraday polarization rotators are commonly used in laser experiments. Most Faraday materials have a nonnegligible absorption, which is a limiting factor for high power laser optical isolators or for intracavity optical diodes. By using a stronger magnetic field and a shorter length of Faraday material, one can obtain the same polarization rotation and a reduced absorption. In this paper, we describe two permanent magnet arrangements that are easy to build and produce magnetic fields up to 1.7 T, substantially more than commonly used. The field homogeneity is largely sufficient for a 30 dB isolation ratio. We finally discuss the prospects for producing even larger fields with permanent magnets.

Interferometric measurement of the temperature dependence of an index of refraction: application to fused silica.

The light reflected by an uncoated Fabry-Perot etalon presents dark rings which give a very sensitive measurement of the variations of the return optical path in the etalon. By measuring the diameters of these rings as a function of the etalon temperature T, we get a sensitive measurement of the derivative dn/dT of the index of refraction n. We have made this experiment with a fused silica etalon and we have achieved a 2% relative uncertainty on dn/dT, comparable to the uncertainty of the best experiments.