Published December 9, 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Non-Smooth Multi-Objective Controller Synthesis for Test-Mass Actuation in Gravitational-Wave Detectors

  • 1. ROR icon University of Twente
  • 2. ROR icon National Institute for Subatomic Physics
  • 3. ROR icon VU Amsterdam
  • 4. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

This paper proposes a non-smooth controller optimization method and shows the results of ongoing research on the implementation of this method for gravitational-wave applications. Typical performance requirements concerning these type of suspensions are defined in terms of both H2- and H∞-type constraints. A non-smooth optimization approach is investigated, which allows the use of non-convex cost functions that are often a result of mixed H2/H∞ optimization problems. Besides the controller, the distribution of the actuation is integrated with the optimization to investigate the feasibility of simultaneous controller and actuator optimization. The results demonstrate that the proposed non-smooth optimization method is able to find suitable solutions for the control and actuator distribution that satisfy all required performance and design constraints.

Copyright and License

© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Acknowledgement

The authors thank M. Valentini for useful discussions and input. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 865816).

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 865816).
 
This research received no external funding.

Data Availability

The original data presented in the study are openly available in Zenodo; DOI 10.5281/zenodo.15126221.
 

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2504.05100 (arXiv)
Is supplemented by
Dataset: 10.5281/zenodo.15126221 (DOI)

Funding

European Research Council
865816

Dates

Submitted
2025-10-20
Accepted
2025-12-03

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
LIGO, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Publication Status
Published