Devices and Materials for the Instrument Science of Advanced Gravitational-Wave Detectors

先进引力波探测器仪器科学设备和材料

• 批准号: 1505598
• 负责人: David Tanner
• 金额: $ 60万
• 依托单位: University of Florida
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-01 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1505598&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Devices; Materials; Instrument; Science; Advanced

Gravitational waves are the messenger that will tell us about some of the most highly energetic events in the universe, in this case the coherent motion of very heavy masses undergoing high acceleration; such large masses can be found in black holes, the merger of neutron star binary systems, supernovae, and the echoes of the big bang. The discovery of gravitational waves as well as the discovery of these sources with Advanced LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory built by the National Science Foundation to make a direct detection of gravitational waves, would be a major milestone in the history of science. Advanced LIGO encompasses an extremely diverse array of underlying scientific and engineering disciplines: examples include lasers, optics, low noise electronics, control systems, grid computing, algorithm development, and handling large data sets. The Advanced LIGO interferometers have turned on and commissioning of them has increased their sensitivity far above previous detectors. The goal of a tenfold sensitivity improvement is in sight. Because the search volume scales as distance cubed, advanced LIGO will have more than 1000 times more sources within its reach. To achieve this improved sensitivity, essentially everything except for the vacuum system has been replaced. This includes the use of a 180 Watt laser, quadruple pendulum suspensions, 40 kilogram test masses, active seismic platforms, a signal-recycled interferometer, stable recycling cavities, an output mode cleaner, DC readout, and improved thermal compensation. The higher laser power presents challenges for the input optics, a responsibility of the University of Florida. Moreover, this research has impacts that go beyond gravitational wave science. High-power optical devices developed in this project have commercial applications in the laser and optics industries.This project will address items that could be needed in order to optimize the performance of the detector. It also addresses basic research needed for future upgrades and next generation detectors, which will further increase the science reach of the observatories as well as work on detector characterization. Simulations of the interferometers will be carried out to aid commissioning work. Work on thermal adaptive mode-matching and devices for beam-jitter suppression will be done. A novel scheme for sensing alignment errors will be modeled and prototyped. Thermal coating noise as a function of temperature will be measured. Looking further into the future, experiments to measure impurities and free carrier absorption in high purity silicon for test masses will be conducted. Considerable effort will be put towards improving the bidirectional throughput of Faraday isolators that are key components of a squeezer for future detectors.

引力波是一种信使，它将告诉我们宇宙中一些最高能的事件，在这种情况下，是非常重的物质经历高加速度的相干运动;这样大的质量可以在黑洞、中子星星双星系统的合并、超新星和大爆炸的回声中找到。引力波的发现，以及由美国国家科学基金会建造的激光干涉引力波天文台（Advanced LIGO）发现这些源，将是科学史上的一个重要里程碑。先进的LIGO涵盖了极其多样化的基础科学和工程学科：例如激光，光学，低噪声电子，控制系统，网格计算，算法开发和处理大型数据集。先进的LIGO干涉仪已经启动，它们的调试使它们的灵敏度远远超过以前的探测器。灵敏度提高十倍的目标已经在望。由于搜索量与距离的立方成正比，先进的LIGO将拥有超过1000倍的源。为了提高灵敏度，除了真空系统之外，基本上所有的东西都被更换了。这包括使用180瓦激光器、四重摆悬挂、40公斤测试质量、主动地震平台、信号回收干涉仪、稳定的回收腔、输出模式清洁器、直流读出和改进的热补偿。更高的激光功率对输入光学提出了挑战，这是佛罗里达大学的责任。此外，这项研究的影响超出了引力波科学。本项目开发的高功率光学器件在激光和光学工业中具有商业应用。本项目将解决优化探测器性能所需的项目。它还涉及未来升级和下一代探测器所需的基础研究，这将进一步增加天文台的科学范围以及探测器表征工作。 将对干涉仪进行模拟，以协助调试工作。工作的热自适应模式匹配和设备的光束抖动抑制将完成。一种新的方案，用于感测对准误差将建模和原型。将测量作为温度函数的热涂层噪声。展望未来，将进行测量测试质量的高纯硅中的杂质和自由载流子吸收的实验。相当大的努力将放在提高双向吞吐量的法拉第隔离器，是未来的探测器挤压的关键组成部分。