Paper detail

Impact of anisotropy on the noncritical squeezing properties of two-transverse-mode optical parametric oscillators

In a series of articles we studied the quantum properties of a degenerate optical parametric oscillator tuned to the first family of transverse modes at the subharmonic. We found that, for a cavity having rotational symmetry respect to the optical axis, a TEM$_{10}$ mode with an arbitrary orientation in the transverse plane is emitted above threshold. We proved then that quantum noise induces a random rotation of this bright TEM$_{10}$ mode in the transverse plane, while the mode orthogonal to it, the so-called dark mode, has perfect quadrature squeezing irrespective of the distance to threshold (noncritical squeezing). This result was linked to the spontaneous rotational symmetry breaking which occurs when the bright mode is generated, and here we analyze how the squeezing of the dark mode is degraded when the cavity is not perfectly symmetric. We will show that large levels of squeezing are still attainable for reasonable values of this anisotropy, with the advantage that the orientation of the bright and dark modes is basically fixed, a very attractive situation from the experimental point of view.