3D stochastic interferometer detects picometer deformations and minute dielectric fluctuations of its optical volume
Optical interferometry has proven extremely powerful to investigate some of the most fundamental laws of physics, using light with very precisely controlled geometry. In the past few decades, various speckle metrology methods have emerged to harness the interferometric properties of strongly disordered light instead, using time-domain analysis of speckle patterns at a maximum rate limited by the frequency of image acquisition. The present work is based on using a centimeter-sized quartz-powder cavity with an arbitrary shape that is engineered with very high Lambertian reflectivity. When filled with a coherent monochromatic photon gas, a statistically isotropic and homogeneous 3D speckle interference pattern is obtained. A single-mode fiber is then used in combination with photon number autocorrelation analysis to detect minute changes of the speckle decorrelation spectrum, caused either by cavity deformations or fluctuations of the dielectric tensor field inside. The decorrelation spectrum is acquired over 8 to 10 frequency decades below 100 MHz, with a sensitivity that is only limited by the intrinsic photon statistics and the extrinsic instrumental noises. With typically 1700 reflections and an average photon transit path length of 62m, our 3D stochastic interferometer yields a typical finesse of 10500, and cavity deformations are detected in an ergodic fashion over a six-decade dynamic range with a power noise floor of 4x{10}^{-3} pm^2 which corresponds to 2.7 pm at 1 kHz. The cavity also operates as a speckle fluctuation amplifier that reveals decorrelation spectra due to picometric thermal motions of colloids in both single and multiple scattering regimes with a typical 100-fold sensitivity gain compared to conventional light scattering techniques.