Structural thermal noise in gram-scale mirror oscillators
Author(s)
Neben, Abraham Richard; Bodiya, Timothy Paul; Wipf, Christopher; Oelker, Eric Glenn; Corbitt, Thomas R.; Mavalvala, Nergis; ... Show more Show less
DownloadNeben-2012-Structural thermal noise in gram-scale mirror oscillators.pdf (799.0Kb)
PUBLISHER_CC
Publisher with Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The thermal noise associated with mechanical dissipation is a ubiquitous limitation to the sensitivity of precision experiments ranging from frequency stabilization to gravitational wave interferometry. We report on the thermal noise limits to the performance of 1 gm mirror oscillators that are part of a cavity optomechanics experiment to observe quantum radiation pressure noise. Thermal noise limits the observed cavity displacement spectrum from 80 Hz to 5 kHz. We present a calculation of the thermal noise, based on finite element analysis of the dissipation due to structural damping, and find it to be in excellent agreement with the experimental result. We conclude with the predicted thermal noise for an improved oscillator design, which should be capable of revealing the noise that arises from quantum backaction in this system.
Date issued
2012-11Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics; MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research; LIGO (Observatory : Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Journal
New Journal of Physics
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Neben, Abraham R et al. “Structural Thermal Noise in Gram-scale Mirror Oscillators.” New Journal of Physics 14.11 (2012): 115008.
Version: Final published version
ISSN
1367-2630