First results from the ‘Violin-Mode’ tests on an advanced LIGO suspension at MIT

Abstract

This paper describes the first results from ‘Violin-Mode’ measurements made on the four suspension fibres of a fully suspended 40 kg test mass. These measurements were made at the LIGO lab, Gravitational Wave Observatory test facility, at MIT. Here, an aluminium-alloy (dummy) test mass, simulating an advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) test mass/mirror, had been suspended in air from a test suspension by four fused-silica suspension fibres, each measuring 400 µm in diameter × 600 mm long. Violin-Mode measurements were made on these highly tensioned fibres by retrofitting a prototype system of four novel shadow sensors to the test suspension, one per fibre, these sensors having, collectively, a displacement sensitivity of (6.9 ± 1.3) × 10−11 m (rms) Hz−1/2, at 500 Hz, over a measuring span of ±0.1 mm. Violin-Mode fundamental resonances were detected in all four fibres: with frequencies ∼ 485 Hz when the test mass was supported lightly from below, and at ∼500 Hz when it was fully suspended. In the latter case the Violin-Mode detection took place whilst the test mass, together with its suspension fibres, was undergoing relatively large-amplitude ‘pendulum-mode’ motion, at ∼0.6 Hz. This motion was measured to have a peak–peak amplitude at one of the suspension fibres of up to ∼140 µm (35 µm, rms)—the shadow sensors each having subsidiary outputs for monitoring such low-frequency, large amplitude, motion. Under fully suspended conditions, a calibrated Violin-Mode ‘free-oscillation’ amplitude of 430 ± 20 picometres, rms, was measured at 500.875 Hz, in the same suspension fibre which was found to be undergoing, simultaneously, the ∼140 µm peak–peak motion. Over the bandwidth monitored (dc to 3.2 kHz), Violin-Mode harmonics up to the sixth were recorded in an evoked response. It was concluded that the prototype system had demonstrated amply its practical viability as a detector of Violin-Mode resonances in the test-mass suspension fibres of gravitational wave interferometers, such as those of advanced LIGO.