A Second-Order Optical Butterworth Fabry-Pérot Filter

Abstract: Filters with flat-top pass-bands are a key enabling technology for signal processing. From communication to sensing, the ability to choose a pass \emph{band}, rather than a single pass \emph{frequency}, while still efficiently suppressing backgrounds at other frequencies, is a critical capability for ensuring both detection sensitivity and power efficiency. Efficient transmission of a single frequency can be achieved by a single-pole resonator -- which in optics is a Fabry-P\'erot cavity offering linewidths from kHz to GHz and beyond. Coupling multiple resonators allows for the construction of flat-top multi-pole filters. These, although straightforward from RF to THz where resonators are macroscopic and tunable, are more difficult to control in the optical band and typically realized with dielectric stacks, whose passband widths exceed 100 GHz. Here, we bridge the gap to narrower bandwidth flat-top filters by proposing and implementing a second-order Butterworth-type optical filter in a single two-mirror Fabry-P\'erot cavity, by coupling the two polarization modes. We demonstrate a pass-band width of 2.68(1)~GHz, a maximum stopband suppression of 43~dB, and a passband insertion loss of 2.2(1)~dB, with out-of-band power suppression falling as the fourth power of detuning. This approach is viable down to much narrower filters, and has the potential to improve high-frequency phase noise performance of lasers, enhance the sensitivity of LIDARs, and provide higher quality narrowband filtering, for example, for Raman spectroscopy.