Published December 15, 2024 | Published
Journal Article

Optical spring tracking for enhancing quantum-limited interferometers

  • 1. ROR icon Louisiana State University
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 3. Thorlabs Crystalline Solutions
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Abstract

Modern interferometers such as LIGO have achieved sensitivities limited by quantum noise, comprising radiation pressure and shot noise. To mitigate this noise, a static system is employed that minimizes the quantum noise within the measurement band. However, since gravitational wave inspiral signals are a single frequency changing over time, only noise at the chirp frequency needs to be minimized. Here we demonstrate a proof-of-principle experiment of dynamically tracking a target signal using an optical spring, resulting in an increased signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). By injecting white noise to simulate excess shot noise, we found the SNR increased by up to a factor of 40 via dynamical tracking when compared to a static configuration.

Copyright and License

© 2024 Optica Publishing Group. All rights, including for text and data mining (TDM), Artificial Intelligence (AI) training, and similar technologies, are reserved.

Funding

National Science Foundation (PHY-2110455).

Data Availability

Data underlying the results presented in this Letter are not publicly available at this time but may be obtained from the authors upon reasonable request.

Additional details

Created:
December 10, 2024
Modified:
December 10, 2024