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Published December 1997 | public
Journal Article

Investigation of violin mode Q for wires of various materials

Abstract

The QQ factors of violin modes for wires of various materials have been measured in order to determine which would be most suitable for use in the suspension of test masses in the initial laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory (LIGO) interferometers. A "guitar" type apparatus was employed to measure violin mode QQs, and losses due to clamping and other practical sources were successfully suppressed below the level of intrinsic wire losses. Steel music wire was found to give the highest extrapolated QQ factors under LIGO conditions among the wires we tested. This extrapolated QQ sets a target for the LIGO suspension which can be attained if all the losses other than the intrinsic wire loss are successfully suppressed. The measured QQs for the steel, tungsten, and titanium wire, which were approximately frequency independent for the first two to three modes, were found to be roughly proportional to the square root of the tension in the wire. This is consistent with the theory of violin mode losses due to frequency-independent intrinsic wire losses.

Additional Information

© 1997 American Institute of Physics. (Received 10 March 1997; accepted for publication 23 September 1997) The authors wish to thank our colleagues in the LIGO project for their support. Special thanks are due to R. Vogt for his supervision and guidance, F. Raab for discussions and contributions to the manuscript, J. Hazel for her guidance on mechanical design of the experimental apparatus, and V. Braginsky and V. Mitrofanov for their useful technical advice on the subject. This work was supported by the SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships) program at California Institute of Technology and by the National Science Foundation under cooperative agreement number PHY-9210038.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 25, 2023