Thermal-noise-limited higher-order mode locking of a reference cavity

Higher-order mode locking has been proposed to reduce the thermal noise limit of reference cavities. By locking a laser to the HG02 mode of a 10-cm long all ultra-low expansion (ULE) cavity and measuring its performance with the three-cornered-hat method among three independently stabilized lasers, we demonstrate a thermal-noise-limited performance of a fractional frequency instability of 4.9×10−16. The results match the theoretical models with higher-order optical modes. The achieved laser instability improves the all ULE short cavity results to a new low level.