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Gravitational Physics

Low-frequency inertial sensing

Speaker: Conor Mow-Lowry (University of Birmingham)
Date: Friday 28 April 2017
Time: 11.15
Venue: Chart Room (N/3.23)

Future gravitational-wave observatories need much improved sensitivity at low-frequencies, below 10Hz. For terrestrial instruments this in turn requires a substantial improvement in seismic isolation. I will talk about some of the limits to inertial sensing performance, and how Earth's gravity affects this. We will see that tilt-to-translation coupling is the limiting factor in current systems and look at the current solutions. In Birmingham we plan to integrate homodyne phasemeters into conventional seismometer mechanics, and our early results show that our readout is sensitive enough to reach the mechanical thermal-noise floor over more than a decade in the critical region. I will also present a quick overview of other experimental and simulation work in Birmingham.