Laser Stabilisation for the Measurement of Thermal Noise
Date
2000
Authors
Baigent, K. G.
Shaddock, Daniel
Gray, Malcolm
McClelland, David
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Volume Title
Publisher
Kluwer Academic Publishers
Abstract
In order to measure the thermal noise of a mirror suspended in a vacuum it is necessary for the length measurement error due to intensity and frequency noise of the probe laser to be reduced below the thermal noise level. Here we report on an experiment to reduce the frequency and intensity noise of a 40mW Nd:YAG laser for this purpose. The frequency is stabilised using the standard reflection locking technique. To stabilise the laser intensity a technique which uses the properties of an 'in loop' light field has been developed. This technique is capable of suppressing the intensity noise below the shot noise limit without reducing the useful laser power. A servo based on this technique has been designed and tested. The experimental results indicate that the laser noise can be reduced to a level which will allow a displacement sensitivity of 1.5 × 10-19m/√Hz for the detection of thermal noise in a frequency band of 10 to 500Hz.
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Keywords
Keywords: Gravitational wave detection; Laser stabilisation; Thermal noise
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Source
General Relativity and Gravitation
Type
Journal article
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Restricted until
2037-12-31
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