A Bilateral Comparison of NIST And PTB Laser Power Standards for Scale Realization Confidence by Gravitational Wave Observatories

Published

September 13, 2021

Author(s)

Matthew Spidell, John Lehman, Stefan Kueck, Marco Lopez, Holger Lecher, Richard Savage, Dripta Bhattacharjee

Abstract

The Gravitational Wave (GW) observatories calibrate interferometer displacement using photon momentum, with laser power serving as the measurand. These observatories are traceable to the International System of Units through a primary standard maintained by the United States' National Metrology Institute. The bilateral Degree of Equivalence for various NMIs indicated in the EUROMET.PR-S2 supplementary comparison reveals scale realization uncertainty unacceptably large for GW event parameterization. Using an improved transfer standard in a bilateral comparison, with LIGO representatives receiving results prior to their comparison, NIST and PTB demonstrated a composite Degree of Equivalence of -0.15 % with an uncertainty of 0.95 % (k=2).

Citation

Metrologia

Volume

58

Issue

5

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1088/1681-7575/ac1e03

Local Download

Keywords

Laser Power, LIGO, Bilateral Comparison

Citation

Spidell, M. , Lehman, J. , Kueck, S. , Lopez, M. , Lecher, H. , Savage, R. and Bhattacharjee, D. (2021), A Bilateral Comparison of NIST And PTB Laser Power Standards for Scale Realization Confidence by Gravitational Wave Observatories, Metrologia, [online], https://doi.org/10.1088/1681-7575/ac1e03, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=932473 (Accessed November 23, 2025)