Journal ArticleDOI
A Mode Selector to Suppress Fluctuations in Laser Beam Geometry
TLDR
In this article, a Michelson interferometer of extreme sensitivity capable of measuring 10-16 m (i.e. some 10-10 of a wavelength λ of the illuminating laser light) was used for the development of a gravitational wave detector.Abstract:
Our development of a gravitational wave detector requires a Michelson interferometer of extreme sensitivity capable of measuring 10-16 m (i.e. some 10-10 of a wavelength λ of the illuminating laser light). Even after painstaking alignment of the interferometer components, and after considerable improvement of the laser stability, noise contributions much in excess of this goal were observed, due partly to fluctuations of the laser beam geometry. The two most obvious types of geometric beam fluctuations are a lateral beam jitter and a pulsation in beam width; these lead to spurious interferometer signals if the interfering wavefronts are misaligned in their tilts or in their curvatures respectively. The geometry of the laser beam can be considerably stabilized by passing it through an optical resonator. The geometric beam fluctuations, as viewed from this resonator, can be described by a well-centred ground mode TEMoo, contaminated by transverse modes TEM mn , with amplitudes decreasing rapidly with the mo...read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The GEO 600 gravitational wave detector
Benno Willke,Peter Aufmuth,C. Aulbert,Stanislav Babak,R. Balasubramanian,B. Barr,S. Berukoff,Suvadeep Bose,Gianpietro Cagnoli,Morag M. Casey,D. Churches,D.A Clubley,C. N. Colacino,David Crooks,Curt Cutler,Karsten Danzmann,R. Davies,R. J. Dupuis,E. J. Elliffe,Carsten Fallnich,Andreas Freise,Stefan Goßler,A. Grant,Hartmut Grote,Gerhard Heinzel,A. Heptonstall,M. Heurs,Martin Hewitson,J. H. Hough,Oliver Jennrich,K. Kawabe,Karsten Kötter,V. Leonhardt,Harald Lück,M. Malec,P. McNamara,S. McIntosh,Kasem Mossavi,Soumya D. Mohanty,Soma Mukherjee,S. Nagano,G. Newton,Benjamin J. Owen,D. A. Palmer,Maria Alessandra Papa,M. V. Plissi,V. Quetschke,D. I. Robertson,N. A. Robertson,Sheila Rowan,Albrecht Rüdiger,Bangalore Suryanarayana Sathyaprakash,Roland Schilling,Bernard F. Schutz,Bernard F. Schutz,R. Senior,Alicia M. Sintes,Kenneth D. Skeldon,Peter H. Sneddon,F. Stief,Kenneth A. Strain,Ian Taylor,C. I. Torrie,Alberto Vecchio,Alberto Vecchio,H. Ward,U. Weiland,H. Welling,P. Williams,Walter Winkler,Graham Woan,I. Zawischa +71 more
TL;DR: The GEO 600 laser interferometer with 600 m armlength is part of a worldwide network of gravitational wave detectors as mentioned in this paper, and it has a monolithic last stage and signal recycling.
Journal ArticleDOI
Automatic alignment of optical interferometers
TL;DR: A system for automatic alignment of optical interferometers relies on using differential phase modulation to permit the detection of the phase difference between two fundamental-mode Gaussian beams at the output of an interferometer.
Book
The Detection of Gravitational Waves
David Blair,Carlton M. Caves +1 more
TL;DR: Blair et al. as discussed by the authors presented an introduction to Gravitational Waves and methods for their detection, including the sources of gravitational waves, detectors, and sources of internal friction in high Q materials.
Journal ArticleDOI
Gravitational Wave Detection by Interferometry (Ground and Space)
TL;DR: The main theme of this review is a discussion of the mechanical and optical principles used in the various long baseline systems in operation around the world — LIGO, Virgo, TAMA300 and LCGT, and GEO600 — and in LISA, a proposed space-borne interferometer.
Journal ArticleDOI
Alignment of resonant optical cavities
TL;DR: This work shows that a translation of the input axis or a mismatch of the beam waist to the resonator waist size causes a coupling of off-axis modes which is inphase with the input field, and proposes a method to measure these coupling coefficients.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Resonant modes in a maser interferometer
A. G. Fox,Tingye Li +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a theoretical investigation has been undertaken to study diffraction of electromagnetic waves in Fabry-Perot interferometers when they are used as resonators in optical masers.
Journal ArticleDOI
Confocal multimode resonator for millimeter through optical wavelength masers
Gary D. Boyd,James P. Gordon +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, a concave spherical resonator with two identical spherical reflectors, separated by any distance up to twice their common radius of curvature, is considered, and the diffraction losses are generally considerably lower for the curved surfaces than for the plane surfaces.
Journal ArticleDOI
Generalized confocal resonator theory
Gary D. Boyd,H. Kogelnik +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the theory of the confocal resonator was extended to include the effect of unequal aperture size and unequal radii of curvature of the two reflectors, which is equivalent to a periodic sequence of lenses with unequal focal lengths.
Journal Article
Photon-noise-limited laser transducer for gravitational antenna
TL;DR: In this article, a laser interferometer transducer for a long, wideband, laser-linked gravitational radiation antenna was constructed and tested using 80 microW from a single mode Spectra-Physics 119 laser on a vibration isolation table in a quiet room.
Journal ArticleDOI
Photon-noise-limited laser transducer for gravitational antenna.
TL;DR: This work has constructed and tested a laser interferometer transducer for a long, wideband, laser-linked gravitational radiation antenna and measured the smallest vibrational displacement measured directly with a laser to date.