We present an interferometric sensor for investigating macroscopic quantum mechanics on a table-top scale. The sensor consists of a pair of suspended optical cavities with finesse over 350,000 ...comprising 10 g fused silica mirrors. The interferometer is suspended by a four-stage, light, in-vacuum suspension with three common stages, which allows for us to suppress common-mode motion at low frequency. The seismic noise is further suppressed by an active isolation scheme, which reduces the input motion to the suspension point by up to an order of magnitude starting from 0.7 Hz. In the current room-temperature operation, we achieve a peak sensitivity of 0.5 fm/Hz in the acoustic frequency band, limited by a combination of readout noise and suspension thermal noise. Additional improvements of the readout electronics and suspension parameters will enable us to reach the quantum radiation pressure noise. Such a sensor can eventually be utilized for demonstrating macroscopic entanglement and for testing semi-classical and quantum gravity models.
Compact Michelson interferometers are well positioned to replace existing displacement sensors in the readout of seismometers and suspension systems, such as those used in contemporary ...gravitational-wave detectors. Here, we continue our previous investigation of a customised compact displacement sensor built by SmarAct that operates on the principle of deep frequency modulation. The focus of this paper is the linearity of this device and its subsequent impact on sensitivity. We show the three primary sources of nonlinearity that arise in the sensor: residual ellipticity, intrinsic distortion of the Lissajous figure, and distortion caused by exceeding the velocity limit imposed by the demodulation algorithm. We verify the theoretical models through an experimental demonstration, where we show the detrimental impact that these nonlinear effects have on device sensitivity. Finally, we simulate the effect that these nonlinearities are likely to have if implemented in the readout of the Advanced LIGO suspensions and show that the noise from nonlinearities should not dominate across the key sub-10 Hz frequency band.
Abstract Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) are leading candidates for dark matter. They are well motivated in many extensions of the standard model and supported by astronomical observations. We ...propose an iterative transformation of the existing facilities of the gravitational-wave detector and technology testbed GEO600, located near Ruthe in Germany, into a kilometre-scale upgrade of the laser-interferometric axion detector LIDA. The final DarkGEO detector could search for coincident signatures of axions and ALPs and significantly surpass the current constraints of both direct searches and astrophysical observations in the measurement band from 10 −16 to 10 −8 eV. We discuss design parameters and sensitivities for the configurations of the different iteration steps as well as technical challenges known from the first LIDA results. The proposed DarkGEO detector will be well suited to probe the mass-coupling parameter space associated with predictions from theoretical models, like grand-unified theories, as well as from astrophysical evidence, like the cosmic infrared background.
The effect of the Earth's gravitational potential on a quantum wave function has only been observed for massive particles. In this paper we present a scheme to measure a gravitationally induced phase ...shift on a single photon traveling in a coherent superposition along different paths of an optical fiber interferometer. To create a measurable signal for the interaction between the static gravitational potential and the wave function of the photon, we propose a variant of a conventional Mach-Zehnder interferometer. We show that the predicted relative phase difference of 10−5 rad is measurable even in the presence of fiber noise, provided additional stabilization techniques are implemented for each arm of a large-scale fiber interferometer. Effects arising from the rotation of the Earth and the material properties of the fibers are analysed. We conclude that optical fiber interferometry is a feasible way to measure the gravitationally induced phase shift on a single-photon wave function, and thus provides a means to corroborate the equivalence of the energy of the photon and its effective gravitational mass.
Gravitational memory is an important prediction of General Relativity, which is intimately related to asymptotic symmetries at null infinity and the so-called soft graviton theorem. For a given ...transient astronomical event, the angular distribution of energy and angular momentum fluxes uniquely determine the displacement and spin memory effect in the sky. We investigate the possibility of using the binary black hole merger events detected by Advanced LIGO/Virgo to test the relation between the source's energy emission and the gravitational memory measured on Earth, as predicted by General Relativity. We find that while it is difficult for Advanced LIGO/Virgo one-year detection of a third-generation detector network will easily rule out the hypothesis assuming isotropic memory distribution. In addition, we construct a phenomenological model for memory waveforms of binary neutron star mergers and use it to address the detectability of memory from these events in the third-generation detector era. We find that measuring gravitational memory from neutron star mergers is a possible way to distinguish between different neutron star equations of state.
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