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Christian Kranhold

Publications and source records attributed to Christian Kranhold.

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Fabrication-Aware Design of a Hybrid Metasurface-Bragg Mirror for Low-Noise Precision Optics

High-reflectivity coatings for precision interferometry must simultaneously minimize optical losses and thermally driven displacement noise. Dielectric Bragg mirrors provide robust high reflectance but rely on thick multilayer coatings, whereas metasurface mirrors provide high reflectance and low noise but are sensitive to fabrication-induced deviations. A fabrication-aware hybrid mirror concept is introduced that combines a resonant single-layer metasurface, an etch-stop layer, an antiresonant spacer, and a reduced Bragg reflector. Fabrication effects, including geometric tolerances and line-edge roughness, are explicitly considered in the optical design. Full-wave electromagnetic simulations are combined with a truncated-Gaussian Monte Carlo analysis to determine the performance distribution under the assumed fabrication conditions. The ideal metasurface design exceeds $99.999\%$ reflectance. After roughness-aware reoptimization, the modeled non-reflected power remains below $2.88\cdot10^{-4}$ at $95\%$ fabrication yield. For the cryogenic ETpathfinder gravitational-wave testbed, three Bragg layer pairs reduce the non-reflected power of the complete stack to approximately $6.4\,\mathrm{ppm}$. The estimated thermal displacement-noise amplitude spectral density is $8.4\cdot10^{-21}\,\mathrm{m\,Hz^{-1/2}}$ at $100\,\mathrm{Hz}$. The architecture connects fabrication robustness, optical performance, and thermal-noise reduction within a single design framework.

physics.optics

Beyond Bragg-Mirrors for Gravitational Wave Telescopes: A Fabrication Tolerant Hybrid Metasurface-Bragg Mirror Design

Coating thermal noise in high-reflectivity test-mass mirrors is a major limitation for future gravitational-wave detectors, especially in the 10--300 Hz band. ET-Pathfinder therefore requires mirror coatings that combine very high reflectance at 1.55 micrometer with low thermal noise under cryogenic conditions. Conventional dielectric Bragg mirrors provide high reflectance but require thick coatings, whereas metasurface mirrors can reduce coating-related noise but are limited by fabrication tolerances and line-edge roughness. We present a hybrid metasurface--Bragg mirror concept tailored to ET-Pathfinder. The design combines a fabrication-tolerant one-layer metasurface, an anti-resonant Fabry--Perot spacer, and a reduced dielectric Bragg stack. Optical performance is evaluated using full-wave electromagnetic simulations, while fabrication robustness is assessed with a truncated-Gaussian Monte Carlo analysis. Line-edge roughness is included as a systematic edge-smoothing effect. The resulting reflectance distributions are used to determine the minimum Bragg-stack support required to meet system-level specifications. The ideal metasurface exceeds 99.999% reflectance. When fabrication uncertainties and line-edge roughness are included, the metasurface reflectance is limited to about 99.9% at the 95% yield level. The remaining transmission can be compensated by a supporting Bragg stack with as few as seven layer pairs. For this configuration, the hybrid mirror achieves a total thermal displacement noise about one order of magnitude below the projected ET-Pathfinder coating-noise budget. These results show that fabrication-limited metasurface reflectance can be compensated within a hybrid architecture, enabling reduced coating thickness and thermal noise for next-generation gravitational-wave detectors.

astro-ph.IM