Designs for future gravitational wave detection facilities feature silicon test masses at cryogenic temperatures to reduce thermal noise and thermally induced aberrations. Designers call for ...operation at 123 K or close to 18 K to exploit the vanishing thermal expansion of crystalline silicon. The amount of absorbed heat that can be radiatively removed from the test masses is limited at these temperatures, forcing complex cooling scenarios to be considered, including conduction through suspension wires. This is particularly relevant for the kilohertz class of detectors that aim for extremely high circulating power, i.e., roughly a factor 20 more than the world record at the time of writing, to reduce quantum noise. We explore the impact of raising the test mass temperature and show that a dedicated kilohertz-band cryogenic instrument can do so without significant sensitivity penalty, thereby boosting the radiative cooling rate and allowing higher power operation with simpler suspensions. We also explore the implications of operating cryogenic broadband detectors at elevated temperatures. The work presented here was instrumental in the development of the Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory kilohertz-band gravitational wave detector design concept.
We describe an efficient Er:YAG laser that is resonantly pumped using continuous-wave (CW) laser diodes at 1470 nm. For CW lasing, it emits 6.1 W at 1645 nm with a slope efficiency of 36%, the ...highest efficiency reported for an Er:YAG laser that is pumped in this manner. In Q-switched operation, the laser produces diffraction-limited pulses with an average power of 2.5 W at 2 kHz PRF. To our knowledge this is the first Q-switched Er:YAG laser resonantly pumped by CW laser diodes.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory has performed a third science run with much improved sensitivities of all three interferometers. We present an analysis of approximately 200 ...hours of data acquired during this run, used to search for a stochastic background of gravitational radiation. We place upper bounds on the energy density stored as gravitational radiation for three different spectral power laws. For the flat spectrum, our limit of omega0 < 8.4 x 10(-4) in the 69-156 Hz band is approximately 10(5) times lower than the previous result in this frequency range.
Extruded Microstructured Fiber Lasers Oermann, M. R.; Ebendorff-Heidepriem, H.; Ottaway, D. J. ...
IEEE photonics technology letters,
04/2012, Letnik:
24, Številka:
7
Journal Article
We present the first fiber laser fabricated from an extruded microstructured preform. This laser is also, to the best of our knowledge, the first microstructured tellurite glass fiber laser. The ...threshold and efficiency of the 980-nm pumped, 1.5-μm erbium-doped tellurite laser were measured to be 1.5 mW and 13%, respectively.
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