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The mirror suspensions in gravitational wave detectors demand low mechanical loss jointing to ensure good enough detector performance and to enable the detection of gravitational waves. Hydroxide catalysis bonds have been used in the fused silica suspensions of the GEO600, Advanced LIGO, and Advanced Virgo detectors. Future detectors may use cryogenic cooling of the mirror suspensions and this leads to a potential change of mirror material and suspension design. Other bonding techniques that could replace or be used alongside hydroxide catalysis bonding are of interest. A design that incorporates repair scenarios is highly desirable. Indeed, the mirror suspensions in KAGRA, which is made from sapphire and operated at cryogenic temperatures, have used a combination of hydroxide catalysis bonding and gallium bonding. This Letter presents the first measurements of the mechanical loss of a gallium bond measured between 10 K and 295 K. It is shown that the loss, which decreases with temperature down to the level of $(1.8\pm 0.3)\times {10}^{-4}$at 10 K, is comparable to that of a hydroxide catalysis bond. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

Glasses are nonequilibrium solids with properties highly dependent on their method of preparation. In vapor-deposited molecular glasses, structural organization could be readily tuned with deposition rate and substrate temperature. Here, we show that the atomic arrangement of strong network-forming GeO 2 glass is modified at medium range (<2 nm) through vapor deposition at elevated temperatures. Raman spectral signatures distinctively show that the population of six-membered GeO 4 rings increases at elevated substrate temperatures. Deposition near the glass transition temperature is more efficient than postgrowth annealing in modifying atomic structure at medium range. The enhanced medium-range organization correlates with reduction of the room temperature internal friction. Identifying the microscopic origin of room temperature internal friction in amorphous oxides is paramount to design the next-generation interference coatings for mirrors of the end test masses of gravitational wave interferometers, in which the room temperature internal friction is a main source of noise limiting their sensitivity. 

The exceptional stability required from high finesse optical cavities and high precision interferometers is fundamentally limited by Brownian motion noise in the interference coatings of the cavity mirrors. In amorphous oxide coatings these thermally driven fluctuations are dominant in the high index layer compared to those in the low index SiO₂layer in the stack. We present a systematic study of the evolution of the structural and optical properties of ion beam sputtered TiO₂-doped Ta₂O₅films with annealing temperature. We show that low mechanical loss in TiO₂-doped Ta₂O₅with a Ti cation ratio = 0.27 is associated with a material that consists of a homogeneous titanium-tantalum-oxygen mixture containing a low density of nanometer sized Ar-filled voids. When the Ti cation ratio is 0.53, phase separation occurs leading to increased mechanical loss. These results suggest that amorphous mixed oxides with low mechanical loss could be identified by considering the thermodynamics of ternary phase formation.