Figure 10: Illustration of an arm cavity of the Virgo gravitational-wave detector [56]: the
macroscopic length of the cavity is approximately 3 km, while the wavelength of the Nd:YAG
laser is . The resonance condition is only affected by the microscopic position of the wave
nodes with respect to the mirror surfaces and not by the macroscopic length, i.e., displacement of
one mirror by re-creates exactly the same condition. However, other parameters of the
cavity, such as the finesse, only depend on the macroscopic length and not on the microscopic
tuning.
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