Temperature Control and Coupled Oscillator Modelling for LIGO Voyager

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Abstract:: In 2022, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project will undergo its transition from its third iteration, A+, to its fourth iteration, Voyager. LIGO Voyager intends to reduce coating thermal noise by operating LIGO at cryogenic temperatures and replacing fused silica optics with silicon. My summer research with the Voyager group addressed the cooling of the planned thermal shields surrounding the LIGO optics using copper straps, the parameter optimization of a ringdown experiment to determine the loss of optics coatings, and determining the temperature dependence of the eigenfrequencies of bulk silicon to develop a method of decoupled temperature determination. Our findings suggest that the F designated copper straps cool more efficiently than S and L straps with a thermal conductance constant of .06721+-.0009W/K. We have produced an approximation of the error budget for the ringdown measurement which suggests that the uncertainty in the loss angle of the disk and coupled system most strongly infuences the error in our loss measurement, and precise measurement of these parameters will result in the most precise results. We have also produced an apparatus for calibrating the temperature dependence of the eigenfrequencies of silicon disks.
Jordan Kemp, SURF17

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LIGO Document T1700225-v2