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Published March 28, 2022 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Piezo-deformable mirrors for active mode matching in advanced LIGO

Abstract

The detectors of the laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory (LIGO) are broadly limited by the quantum noise and rely on the injection of squeezed states of light to achieve their full sensitivity. Squeezing improvement is limited by mode mismatch between the elements of the squeezer and the interferometer. In the current LIGO detectors, there is no way to actively mitigate this mode mismatch. This paper presents a new deformable mirror for wavefront control that meets the active mode matching requirements of advanced LIGO. The active element is a piezo-electric transducer, which actuates on the radius of curvature of a 5 mm thick mirror via an axisymmetric flexure. The operating range of the deformable mirror is 120±8 mD in vacuum and an additional 200 mD adjustment range accessible out of vacuum. Combining the operating range and the adjustable static offset, it is possible to deform a flat mirror from −65 mD to −385 mD. The measured bandwidth of the actuator and driver electronics is 6.8 Hz. The scattering into higher-order modes is measured to be <0.2% over the nominal beam radius. These piezo-deformable mirrors meet the stringent noise and vacuum requirements of advanced LIGO and will be used for the next observing run (O4) to control the mode-matching between the squeezer and the interferometer.

Additional Information

© 2022 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement. Received 5 Oct 2021; revised 25 Jan 2022; accepted 7 Feb 2022; published 15 Mar 2022. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation, and operates under cooperative agreement PHY-1764464. A+ was built under award PHY-1234382. This paper carries LIGO Document Number LIGO P2100315. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), through project number CE170100004. Funding: Australian Research Council (CE170100004); National Science Foundation (PHY-1234382, PHY-1764464). Data Availability. Data underlying the results presented in this paper are not publicly available at this time but may be obtained from the authors upon reasonable request. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Attached Files

Published - oe-30-7-10491.pdf

Submitted - 2110.00674.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023