Growth of GaAs/AlAs distributed Bragg reflector on a concave GaAs substrate (Conference Presentation)

High reflection dielectric distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) can be used with high Q optical cavity to narrow down the spectrum optical source, for experimental quantum electro-dynamics, etc. To construct a free space optical cavity for a local oscillator of the state-of-the-art optical frequency standards, concave mirrors are used as one of the end mirrors of the cavity. Usually, the high reflection DBR is fabricated by depositing dielectric materials on a glass substrate. However, the ultimate stability of the optical cavity is limited by the thermal noise of dielectric DBR. To overcome this problem, a crystalline DBR was proposed to stabilize the optical cavity, which can reduce thermal noise. In this study, we fabricated crystalline DBR by GaAs/AlAs compound semiconductor on a concave GaAs substrate. Although a traditional semiconductor substrate has atomically flat surface, we fabricated a concave surface with a curvature radius of 1000 mm on the GaAs substrate by optical quality polishing. Then, we carried out wet etching and introduced it in vacuum chamber for molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). In the MBE growth chamber, we carried out thermal cleaning with As4 at a substrate temperature of 600°C. Next, the GaAs/AlAs DBR structure was grown at 580°C. The evaluation of surface roughness was conducted by atomic force microscopy, which showed a roughness of 0.165 nm in 1 × 1 um measurement such that a very smooth surface can be obtained.