More Like this

1. Demonstration of dynamic thermal compensation for parametric instability suppression in Advanced LIGO

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/ab8be9  

   Hardwick, T. ; Hamedan, V. J. ; Blair, C. ; Green, A. C. ; Vander-Hyde, D. ( September 2020 , Classical and Quantum Gravity)

   Advanced LIGO and other ground-based interferometric gravitational-wave detectors use high laser power to minimize shot noise and suspended optics to reduce seismic noise coupling. This can result in an opto-mechanical coupling which can become unstable and saturate the interferometer control systems. The severity of these parametric instabilities scales with circulating laser power and first hindered LIGO operations in 2014. Static thermal tuning and active electrostatic damping have previously been used to control parametric instabilities at lower powers but are insufficient as power is increased. Here we report the first demonstration of dynamic thermal compensation to avoid parametric instability in an Advanced LIGO detector. Annular ring heaters that compensate central heating are used to tune the optical mode away from multiple problematic mirror resonance frequencies. We develop a single-cavity approximation model to simulate the optical beat note frequency during the central heating and ring heating transient. An experiment of dynamic ring heater tuning at the LIGO Livingston detector was carried out at 170 kW circulating power and, in agreement with our model, the third order optical beat note is controlled to avoid instability of the 15 and 15.5 kHz mechanical modes. We project that dynamic thermal compensation with ring heater input conditioning can be used in parallel with acoustic mode dampers to control the optical mode transient and avoid parametric instability of these modes up to Advanced LIGO’s design circulating power of 750  kW. The experiment also demonstrates the use of three mode interaction monitoring as a sensor of the cavity geometry, used to maintain theg-factor product tog₁g₂= 0.829 ± 0.004.

    

   more » « less
2. Scattering loss in precision metrology due to mirror roughness

   https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAA.455127  

   Drori, Yehonathan ; Eichholz, Johannes ; Edo, Tega ; Yamamoto, Hiro ; Enomoto, Yutaro ; Venugopalan, Gautam ; Arai, Koji ; Adhikari, Rana X. ( April 2022 , Journal of the Optical Society of America A)

   Optical losses degrade the sensitivity of laser interferometric instruments. They reduce the number of signal photons and introduce technical noise associated with diffuse light. In quantum-enhanced metrology, they break the entanglement between correlated photons. Such decoherence is one of the primary obstacles in achieving high levels of quantum noise reduction in precision metrology. In this work, we compare direct measurements of cavity and mirror losses in the Caltech 40 m gravitational-wave detector prototype interferometer with numerical estimates obtained from semi-analytic intra-cavity wavefront simulations using mirror surface profile maps. We show a unified approach to estimating the total loss in optical cavities (such as the LIGO gravitational detectors) that will lead towards the engineering of systems with minimum decoherence for quantum-enhanced precision metrology.

    

   more » « less
3. Passive laser power stabilization via an optical spring

   https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.456535  

   Cullen, Torrey ; Aronson, Scott ; Pagano, Ron ; Trad Nery, Marina ; Cain, Henry ; Cripe, Jonathon ; Cole, Garrett D. ; Sharifi, Safura ; Aggarwal, Nancy ; Willke, Benno ; et al ( May 2022 , Optics Letters)

   Metrology experiments can be limited by the noise produced by the laser involved via small fluctuations in the laser’s power or frequency. Typically, active power stabilization schemes consisting of an in-loop sensor and a feedback control loop are employed. Those schemes are fundamentally limited by shot noise coupling at the in-loop sensor. In this Letter, we propose to use the optical spring effect to passively stabilize the classical power fluctuations of a laser beam. In a proof of principle experiment, we show that the relative power noise of the laser is stabilized from approximately 2 × 10⁻⁵Hz^−1/2to a minimum value of 1.6 × 10⁻⁷Hz^−1/2, corresponding to the power noise reduction by a factor of 125. The bandwidth at which stabilization occurs ranges from 400 Hz to 100 kHz. The work reported in this Letter further paves the way for high power laser stability techniques which could be implemented in optomechanical experiments and in gravitational wave detectors.

    

   more » « less
4. Noise in the LIGO livingston gravitational wave observatory due to trains

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/acf01f  

   Glanzer, J. ; Soni, S. ; Spoon, J. ; Effler, A. ; González, G. ( September 2023 , Classical and Quantum Gravity)

   Environmental seismic disturbances limit the sensitivity of LIGO gravitational wave detectors. Trains near the LIGO Livingston detector produce low frequency (0.5–$10\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$) ground noise that couples into the gravitational wave sensitive frequency band (10–$100\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$) through light reflected in mirrors and other surfaces. We investigate the effect of trains during the Advanced LIGO third observing run, and propose a method to search for narrow band seismic frequencies responsible for contributing to increases in scattered light. Through the use of the linear regression tool Lasso (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) and glitch correlations, we identify the most common seismic frequencies that correlate with increases in detector noise as 0.6–$0.8\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$, 1.7–$1.9\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$, 1.8–$2.0\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$, and 2.3–$2.5\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}$in the LIGO Livingston corner station.

    

   more » « less
5. Data quality up to the third observing run of advanced LIGO: Gravity Spy glitch classifications

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/acb633  

   Glanzer, J. ; Banagiri, S. ; Coughlin, S. B. ; Soni, S. ; Zevin, M. ; Berry, C. P. L. ; Patane, O. ; Bahaadini, S. ; Rohani, N. ; Crowston, K. ; et al ( February 2023 , Classical and Quantum Gravity)

   Understanding the noise in gravitational-wave detectors is central to detecting and interpreting gravitational-wave signals. Glitches are transient, non-Gaussian noise features that can have a range of environmental and instrumental origins. The Gravity Spy project uses a machine-learning algorithm to classify glitches based upon their time–frequency morphology. The resulting set of classified glitches can be used as input to detector-characterisation investigations of how to mitigate glitches, or data-analysis studies of how to ameliorate the impact of glitches. Here we present the results of the Gravity Spy analysis of data up to the end of the third observing run of advanced laser interferometric gravitational-wave observatory (LIGO). We classify 233981 glitches from LIGO Hanford and 379805 glitches from LIGO Livingston into morphological classes. We find that the distribution of glitches differs between the two LIGO sites. This highlights the potential need for studies of data quality to be individually tailored to each gravitational-wave observatory.

    

   more » « less