Beam tube boundary effects in stray light modeling of long Fabry-Perot arm cavities for third-generation gravitational-wave detectors

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Andrés-Carcasona, M., Evans, M.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Andrés-Carcasona, M.
Evans, M.
author_facet Andrés-Carcasona, M.
Evans, M.
contents Next-generation gravitational-wave detectors such as Cosmic Explorer and the Einstein Telescope will operate 10-40 km Fabry-Perot arm cavities inside vacuum beam tubes. FFT-based paraxial tools treat propagation in free space and therefore do not explicitly enforce beam tube boundary conditions. We introduce a waveguide-like mode description of the optical field that incorporates an imposed beam tube boundary condition and enables an independent benchmark of free-space FFT tools We derive the associated modal-mixing matrices for mirrors and baffles, including a closed-form series for axisymmetric circular apertures. We quantify the strain-equivalent couplings from baffle miscentering and from a localized near-wall tube defect, and show that they are suppressed as baffle density increases. In the relevant regime of densely baffled cavities and small perturbations, beam tube boundary effects are subdominant, which supports the continued use of FFT-based codes to guide the design of 3G detectors.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_21303
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beam tube boundary effects in stray light modeling of long Fabry-Perot arm cavities for third-generation gravitational-wave detectors
Andrés-Carcasona, M.
Evans, M.
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Detectors
Next-generation gravitational-wave detectors such as Cosmic Explorer and the Einstein Telescope will operate 10-40 km Fabry-Perot arm cavities inside vacuum beam tubes. FFT-based paraxial tools treat propagation in free space and therefore do not explicitly enforce beam tube boundary conditions. We introduce a waveguide-like mode description of the optical field that incorporates an imposed beam tube boundary condition and enables an independent benchmark of free-space FFT tools We derive the associated modal-mixing matrices for mirrors and baffles, including a closed-form series for axisymmetric circular apertures. We quantify the strain-equivalent couplings from baffle miscentering and from a localized near-wall tube defect, and show that they are suppressed as baffle density increases. In the relevant regime of densely baffled cavities and small perturbations, beam tube boundary effects are subdominant, which supports the continued use of FFT-based codes to guide the design of 3G detectors.
title Beam tube boundary effects in stray light modeling of long Fabry-Perot arm cavities for third-generation gravitational-wave detectors
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Detectors
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21303