Test facility for experimental investigations of the He-II based ET-LF payload cooling concept

The Einstein Telescope (ET) is a third generation gravitational wave detector, combining a low-frequency (LF) and a high-frequency (HF) laser interferometer. Cryogenic operation of ET-LF in the temperature range of 10-20 K is essential to suppress the suspension thermal noise (STN), which dominates the detection sensitivity at frequencies below 10 Hz. The minimization of the STN requires suspension materials with high thermal conductivity and low mechanical dissipation at cryogenic temperatures. Motivated by the exceptional heat conductivity of static He-II and a presumably low dissipation, a new marionette suspension design with a He-II filled titanium tube has been proposed and, theoretically, shown to meet the ET-D sensitivity requirements. The concept includes open fundamental questions that can only be addressed by measurements of the mechanical Q-factor, providing crucial insights in the dissipative behaviour of such a system. Hence, an experimental setup for cryogenic Q-factor measurements is being planned. The scope of experiments and a first conceptual design are being presented here. Beside the Q-factor measurements, a main focus of this facility is given to R&D on the integration of the He-II system and the mechanical interface to the payload in view of noise isolation

Conceptual cryostat design for cryogenic suspension studies for the Einstein Telescope

The Einstein Telescope (ET) is a third generation gravitational wave detector, combining a low-frequency (LF) and a high-frequency (HF) laser interferometer. Cryogenic operation of ET-LF in the temperature range of 10K to 20K is essential to suppress the suspension thermal noise, which dominates the detection sensitivity at frequencies below 10 Hz. This requires suspension materials with high thermal conductivity and low mechanical dissipation at cryogenic temperatures. Two possible suspension concepts are currently considered, using either monocrystalline suspension fibers made of silicon or sapphire, or titanium suspension tubes filled with static He-II. The dissipative behavior of these suspensions is characterized by the mechanical Q-factor. It can be measured by the ring-down method, exciting the suspensions to resonance vibrations on the nanometer scale and analyzing the decay time. For this purpose, a new cryogenic test facility is being planned, allowing the investigation of cryogenic payload suspensions for third-generation gravitational wave detectors. The test cryostat is equipped with a cryocooler and enables real-size studies with various suspension materials and geometries. The future integration of He-II is foreseen to enable He-II filled suspension studies. We describe the scope of experiments and the conceptual design of the test cryostat

Cryogenic payloads for the Einstein Telescope -- Baseline design with heat extraction, suspension thermal noise modelling and sensitivity analyses

The Einstein Telescope (ET) is a third generation gravitational wave detector that includes a room-temperature high-frequency (ET-HF) and a cryogenic low-frequency laser interferometer (ET-LF). The cryogenic ET-LF is crucial for exploiting the full scientific potential of ET. We present a new baseline design for the cryogenic payload that is thermally and mechanically consistent and compatible with the design sensitivity curve of ET. The design includes two options for the heat extraction from the marionette, based on a monocrystalline high-conductivity marionette suspension fiber and a thin-wall titanium tube filled with static He-II, respectively. Following a detailed description of the design options and the suspension thermal noise (STN) modelling, we present the sensitivity curves of the two baseline designs, discuss the influence of various design parameters on the sensitivity of ET-LF and conclude with an outlook to future R&D activities.Comment: 20 pages, Article to be published/submitted in Physical Review D - Journa

The variable finesse locking technique

Virgo is a power recycled Michelson interferometer, with 3 km long Fabry-Perot cavities in the arms. The locking of the interferometer has been obtained with an original lock acquisition technique. The main idea is to lock the instrument away from its working point. Lock is obtained by misaligning the power recycling mirror and detuning the Michelson from the dark fringe. In this way, a good fraction of light escapes through the antisymmetric port and the power build-up inside the recycling cavity is extremely low. The benefit is that all the degrees of freedom are controlled when they are almost decoupled, and the linewidth of the recycling cavity is large. The interferometer is then adiabatically brought on to the dark fringe. This technique is referred to as variable finesse, since the recycling cavity is considered as a variable finesse Fabry-Perot. This technique has been widely tested and allows us to reach the dark fringe in few minutes, in an essentially deterministic way

A simple line detection algorithm applied to Virgo data

International audienceWe propose a new method for the detection of spectral lines in random noise. It mimics the processing scheme of matching filtering, i.e., a whitening procedure combined with the measurement of the correlation between the data and a template. Thanks to the original noise spectrum estimate used in the whitening procedure, the algorithm can easily be tuned to various types of noise. It can thus be applied to the data taken from a wide class of sensors. This versatility and its small computational cost make this method particularly well suited for real-time monitoring in gravitational wave experiments. We show the results of its application to Virgo C4 commissioning data

A first test of a sine-Hough method for the detection of pulsars in binary systems using the E4 Virgo engineering run data

Most of the known pulsars with frequencies lying in the best sensitivity range of the Virgo/LIGO/TAMA interferometers belong to binary systems. Accordingly their frequencies are Doppler shifted in an unknown way. We investigate a new method to search for and extract the parameters of such pulsars. A first preliminary test of this method, performed on the Virgo data recorded during the E4 engineering run, is presented

A first study of environmental noise coupling to the Virgo interferometer

International audienceDuring the commissioning of the Virgo interferometer, a search for environmental noise contributions to the dark fringe signal was undertaken. Dedicated tests have been performed to identify major sources of disturbances and to understand the coupling mechanism with the interferometer. The major effect is due to seismic/acoustic noise coupling to the laser beam before the input mode cleaner, then propagating as beam power noise to the ITF dark fringe output signal. In this paper we illustrate the tests performed and preliminary results of our investigation

The Virgo 3 km interferometer for gravitational wave detection

Virgo, designed, constructed and developed by the French-Italian VIRGO collaboration located in Cascina (Pisa, Italy) and aiming to detect gravitational waves, is a ground-based power recycled Michelson interferometer, with 3 km long suspended Fabry-Perot cavities. The first Virgo scientific data-taking started in mid-May 2007, in coincidence with the corresponding LIGO detectors. The optical scheme of the interferometer and the various optical techniques used in the experiment, such as the laser source, control, alignment, stabilization and detection strategies are outlined. The future upgrades that are planned for Virgo from the optical point of view, especially concerning the evolution of the Virgo laser, are presented. Finally, the next generation of the gravitational wave detector (advanced Virgo) is introduced from the point of view of the laser system