An official website of the United States government
Here’s how you know
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock (
) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Progress on low-frequency active vibration isolation
Published
Author(s)
S J. Richman
Abstract
The gravity group at JILA is constructing a three-stage active isolation system to demonstrate useful reduction of low-frequency seismic noise for a gravitational wave interferometer. The control loops on the first two stages are now fully functional in all six rigid-body degrees-of-freedom. Measurements of the responce of the system to large input signals have shown an isolation factor of 3x103 in both vertical and horizontal directions at frequencies of 1 Hz and above. With the most important control system problems solved, we have turned out attention to noise reduction. The first main stage seismometers have been instumented with high-sensitivity readouts. These are single-bounce Michelson interferometers using corner cubes, each illuminated with 1.3 υm light delivered via optical fiber from a quiet Nd:YAG laser. The interfoerometers should allow a shot noise-limited seismometer performance of 3x10-15m/Hz.