Noninvasive measurements of cavity parameters by use of squeezed vacuum

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a method for noninvasive measurements of cavity parameters by injection of squeezed vacuum into an optical cavity. The principle behind this technique is the destruction of the correlation between upper and lower quantum sidebands with respect to the carrier frequency when the squeezed field is incident on the cavity. This method is especially useful for ultrahigh-Q cavities, such as whispering-gallery-mode cavities, in which absorption and scattering by light-induced nonlinear processes inhibit precise measurements of the cavity parameters. We show that the linewidth of a test cavity is measured to be γ=844±40 kHz, which agrees with the classically measured linewidth of the cavity within the uncertainty (γ=856±34 kHz).