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Published 2006 | Published
Journal Article Open

Silica suspension and coating developments for Advanced LIGO

Abstract

The proposed upgrade to the LIGO detectors to form the Advanced LIGO detector system is intended to incorporate a low thermal noise monolithic fused silica final stage test mass suspension based on developments of the GEO 600 suspension design. This will include fused silica suspension elements jointed to fused silica test mass substrates, to which dielectric mirror coatings are applied. The silica fibres used for GEO 600 were pulled using a Hydrogen-Oxygen flame system. This successful system has some limitations, however, that needed to be overcome for the more demanding suspensions required for Advanced LIGO. To this end a fibre pulling machine based on a CO2 laser as the heating element is being developed in Glasgow with funding from EGO and PPARC. At the moment a significant limitation for proposed detectors like Advanced LIGO is expected to come from the thermal noise of the mirror coatings. An investigation on mechanical losses of silica/tantala coatings was carried out by several labs involved with Advanced LIGO R&D. Doping the tantala coating layer with titania was found to reduce the coating mechanical dissipation. A review of the results is given here.

Additional Information

© IOP Publishing Limited 2006. Proceedings of the Sixth Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves, 20–24 June 2005, Bankoku Shinryoukan, Okinawa, Japan The authors would like to thank colleagues in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, especially David Shoemaker, for their advice and interest in this work. The authors acknowledge financial support from the following agencies and universities: National Science Foundation (NSF), Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), the University of Glasgow. The US authors would like to thank the National Science Foundation for their support of this work through grants PHY-0140335 (Syracuse), PHY-0140297 (Stanford) and PHY-0107417 (LIGO Laboratory)

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Created:
August 22, 2023
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October 13, 2023