Speaker
Description
Optical benches for low-frequency, picometer-stable laser interferometry, as used
in the space-based gravitational wave detector LISA, are usually made by bond-
ing silicate glass components to an ultra-low-expansion glass ceramic. To pro-
vide ground-support equipment for the mission and for testing parts of the in-
struments we are studying a toolset to realize picometer-stable interferometers
which, in contrast, are adjustable. For this we use an ULE-ceramic baseplate
with thermally compensated optical mounts which are mounted in the bench
using invar insets, screws and clamps. Our toolset will be placed inside a vac-
uum chamber to suppress temperature noise and reach a stability of 1 pm/√Hz
down to 3 mHz. A testbed for adjustable ultra-stable interferometers might have
further applications in other, future gravitational wave detectors on the ground
and in space. We present the current status of our set-up and the concept of
a heterodyne laser locking experiment to verify the stability of our approach
before implementing a larger-scale optical bench.
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