Reducing control noise in gravitational wave detectors with interferometric local damping of suspended optics

van Dongen, J. et al. (2023) Reducing control noise in gravitational wave detectors with interferometric local damping of suspended optics. Review of Scientific Instruments, 94(5), 054501. (doi: 10.1063/5.0144865)

Abstract

Control noise is a limiting factor in the low-frequency performance of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). In this paper, we model the effects of using new sensors called Homodyne Quadrature Interferometers (HoQIs) to control the suspension resonances. We show that if we were to use HoQIs, instead of the standard shadow sensors, we could suppress resonance peaks up to tenfold more while simultaneously reducing the noise injected by the damping system. Through a cascade of effects, this will reduce the resonant cross-coupling of the suspensions, allow for improved stability for feed-forward control, and result in improved sensitivity of the detectors in the 10–20 Hz band. This analysis shows that improved local sensors, such as HoQIs, should be used in current and future detectors to improve low-frequency performance.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the United States NSF and operates under cooperative Agreement No. PHY-1764464; Advanced LIGO was built under Award No. PHY-0823459. The authors acknowledge the support of the Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy at the University of Birmingham and STFC grants “Astrophysics at the University of Birmingham” Grant No. ST/S000305/1 and “The A+ upgrade: Expanding the Advanced LIGO Horizon” Grant No. ST/S00243X/1. The support for Cardiff University grants were from Leverhulme Trust: Grant No. PLP-2018-066, and UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC): Grant No. ST/V005618/1. This project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No. 865816).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Barton, Dr Mark
• Authors: van Dongen, J., Prokhorov, L., Cooper, S. J., Barton, M. A., Bonilla, E., Dooley, K. L., Driggers, J. C., Effler, A., Holland, N. A., Huddart, A., Kasprzack, M., Kissel, J. S., Lantz, B., Mitchell, A. L., O’Dell, J., Pele, A., Robertson, C., and Mow-Lowry, C. M.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
• Research Centre: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy > Institute for Gravitational Research
• Journal Name: Review of Scientific Instruments
• Publisher: AIP Publishing
• ISSN: 0034-6748
• ISSN (Online): 1089-7623
• Published Online: 23 May 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Review of Scientific Instruments 94(5): 054501
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License