Wiener filtering with a seismic underground array at the Sanford Underground Research Facility

A seismic array has been deployed at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the former Homestake mine, South Dakota, to study the underground seismic environment. This includes exploring the advantages of constructing a third-generation gravitational-wave detector underground. A major noise source for these detectors would be Newtonian noise, which is induced by fluctuations in the local gravitational field. The hope is that a combination of a low-noise seismic environment and coherent noise subtraction using seismometers in the vicinity of the detector could suppress the Newtonian noise to below the projected noise floor for future gravitational-wave detectors. In this paper, we use Wiener filtering techniques to subtract coherent noise in a seismic array in the frequency band 0.05 -- 1\,Hz. This achieves more than an order of magnitude noise cancellation over a majority of this band. We show how this subtraction would benefit proposed future low-frequency gravitational wave detectors. The variation in the Wiener filter coefficients over the course of the day, including how local activities impact the filter, is analyzed. We also study the variation in coefficients over the course of a month, showing the stability of the filter with time. How varying the filter order affects the subtraction performance is also explored. It is shown that optimizing filter order can significantly improve subtraction of seismic noise, which gives hope for future gravitational-wave detectors to address Newtonian noise

Quantitative test of general theories of the intrinsic laser linewidth

We perform a first-principles calculation of the quantum-limited laser linewidth, testing the predictions of recently developed theories of the laser linewidth based on fluctuations about the known steady-state laser solutions against traditional forms of the Schawlow-Townes linewidth. The numerical study is based on finite-difference time-domain simulations of the semiclassical Maxwell-Bloch lasing equations, augmented with Langevin force terms, and thus includes the effects of dispersion, losses due to the open boundary of the laser cavity, and non-linear coupling between the amplitude and phase fluctuations ($\alpha$ factor). We find quantitative agreement between the numerical results and the predictions of the noisy steady-state ab initio laser theory (N-SALT), both in the variation of the linewidth with output power, as well as the emergence of side-peaks due to relaxation oscillations.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure

Permanent Electric Dipole Moments of Single-, Two-, and Three-Nucleon Systems

A nonzero electric dipole moment (EDM) of the neutron, proton, deuteron or helion, in fact, of any finite system necessarily involves the breaking of a symmetry, either by the presence of external fields (i.e. electric fields leading to the case of induced EDMs) or explicitly by the breaking of the discrete parity and time-reflection symmetries in the case of permanent EDMs. We discuss two theorems describing these phenomena and report about the cosmological motivation for an existence of CP breaking beyond what is generated by the Kobayashi-Maskawa mechanism in the Standard Model and what this might imply for the permanent electric dipole moments of the nucleon and light nuclei by estimating a window of opportunity for physics beyond what is currently known. Recent - and in the case of the deuteron even unpublished - results for the relevant matrix elements of nuclear EDM operators are presented and the relevance for disentangling underlying New Physics sources are discussed.Comment: 20 pages, chapter for the memorial book "Gerry Brown 90", final version, some typos correcte

On line power spectra identification and whitening for the noise in interferometric gravitational wave detectors

In this paper we address both to the problem of identifying the noise Power Spectral Density of interferometric detectors by parametric techniques and to the problem of the whitening procedure of the sequence of data. We will concentrate the study on a Power Spectral Density like the one of the Italian-French detector VIRGO and we show that with a reasonable finite number of parameters we succeed in modeling a spectrum like the theoretical one of VIRGO, reproducing all its features. We propose also the use of adaptive techniques to identify and to whiten on line the data of interferometric detectors. We analyze the behavior of the adaptive techniques in the field of stochastic gradient and in the Least Squares ones.Comment: 28 pages, 21 figures, uses iopart.cls accepted for pubblication on Classical and Quantum Gravit

Noise parametric identification and whitening for LIGO 40-meter interferometer data

We report the analysis we made on data taken by Caltech 40-meter prototype interferometer to identify the noise power spectral density and to whiten the sequence of noise. We concentrate our study on data taken in November 1994, in particular we analyzed two frames of data: the 18nov94.2.frame and the 19nov94.2.frame. We show that it is possible to whiten these data, to a good degree of whiteness, using a high order whitening filter. Moreover we can choose to whiten only restricted band of frequencies around the region we are interested in, obtaining a higher level of whiteness.Comment: 11 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication by Physical Review

Characterization of disturbance sources for LISA: torsion pendulum results

A torsion pendulum allows ground-based investigation of the purity of free-fall for the LISA test masses inside their capacitive position sensor. This paper presents recent improvements in our torsion pendulum facility that have both increased the pendulum sensitivity and allowed detailed characterization of several important sources of acceleration noise for the LISA test masses. We discuss here an improved upper limit on random force noise originating in the sensor. Additionally, we present new measurement techniques and preliminary results for characterizing the forces caused by the sensor's residual electrostatic fields, dielectric losses, residual spring-like coupling, and temperature gradients.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication Classical and Quantum Gravit

Measuring the photon distribution by ON/OFF photodectors

Reconstruction of photon statistics of optical states provide fundamental information on the nature of any optical field and find various relevant applications. Nevertheless, no detector that can reliably discriminate the number of incident photons is available. On the other hand the alternative of reconstructing density matrix by quantum tomography leads to various technical difficulties that are particular severe in the pulsed regime (where mode matching between signal an local oscillator is very challenging). Even if on/off detectors, as usual avalanche PhotoDiodes operating in Geiger mode, seem useless as photocounters, recently it was shown how reconstruction of photon statistics is possible by considering a variable quantum efficiency. Here we present experimental reconstructions of photon number distributions of both continuous-wave and pulsed light beams in a scheme based on on/off avalanche photodetection assisted by maximum-likelihood estimation. Reconstructions of the distribution for both semiclassical and quantum states of light (as single photon, coherent, pseudothermal and multithermal states) are reported for single-mode as well as for multimode beams. The stability and good accuracy obtained in the reconstruction of these states clearly demonstrate the interesting potentialities of this simple technique.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, to appear on Laser Physic