Sensors for Low-Frequency Improvements in Advanced LIGO

该奖项支持引力物理仪器的研究，它解决了NSF“宇宙之窗”大构想的优先领域。该项目旨在开发高精度传感器，如紧凑型惯性倾斜传感器，以提高LIGO的低频灵敏度和鲁棒性。LIGO灵敏度的提高将导致从更重的双星源探测到引力波（GW），并改善信噪比。使LIGO在恶劣的环境条件下（如风和地震）变得强大，可以改善GW观测的占空比，从而导致更多的探测，这将反过来提高GW科学新发现的速度。倾斜传感器将在地震学和地球物理学等领域产生更广泛的影响，可以在低至10 mHz的频率下测量远程地震倾斜和无倾斜地面加速度。为这些倾斜传感器开发的高精度角度读数在计量和精密实验中具有广泛的应用。该奖项不仅支持先进LIGO设备的开发，而且还有助于维持和加强桌面重力组与引力波探测社区的协同活动。重要的是，这项STEM研究将培养本科生和研究生为基础研究建造精密机械仪器。强风、微震和地震等环境条件不断影响着LIGO探测器的占空比，并增加了探测器的噪声。这主要是由于地震仪无法区分低频倾斜和平移，即所谓的倾斜-水平耦合。该小组开发的地面倾斜传感器已经改善了LIGO的低频地震隔离。使它们更小，更敏感的干涉读数，并符合LIGO的真空要求，将允许它们直接安装在主镜悬挂的隔离平台上，将平台的低频角运动减少两个数量级以上。此外，该小组还将研究牛顿降噪传感器和重力校准器，以提高GW测量的绝对精度。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports research in gravitational physics instrumentation, and it addresses the priority areas of NSF's "Windows on the Universe" Big Idea. The project aims at the development of high-precision sensors, such as a compact inertial tilt sensor, to improve the low-frequency sensitivity and robustness of LIGO. Improvement in LIGO's sensitivity will lead to the detection of gravitational waves (GW) from heavier binary sources and improved signal to noise ratio. Making LIGO robust against harsh environmental conditions, such as wind and earthquakes, improves the duty cycle for GW observation, leading to more detections, which will in turn increase the rate of new discoveries from GW science. The tilt sensors will have a broader impact in areas such as seismology and geophysics by enabling measurement of tele-seismic tilts and tilt-free ground acceleration at frequencies as low as 10 mHz. The high precision angle readouts developed for these tilt sensors have a wide variety of applications in metrology and precision experiments. This award not only supports the development of devices for Advanced LIGO, but it also serves to maintain and strengthen synergistic activities of the table-top gravity group with the gravitational wave detection community. Importantly, this STEM research will train undergraduate and graduate students in building precision mechanical instruments for fundamental research.Environmental conditions such as high wind, microseism and earthquakes continue to affect duty cycle and add noise to the LIGO detectors. This is primarily due to the inability of seismometers to distinguish between low-frequency tilt and translation, known as tilt-horizontal coupling. The ground-tilt sensors the group has developed are already improving the low-frequency seismic isolation in LIGO. Making them smaller, more sensitive with interferometric readouts and compatible with LIGO vacuum requirements, would allow them to be mounted directly on the isolated platforms from which the main mirrors are suspended, reducing the low-frequency angular motion of the platform by more than two orders of magnitude. In addition, the group will also research sensors for Newtonian noise reduction and a Gravitational calibrator to improve the absolute accuracy of GW measurementsThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.