ABSTRACT
Measurements are reported of the cross-correlation of spectra of differential position signals from the Fermilab Holometer, a pair of colocated 39 m long, high power Michelson interferometers with flat broadband frequency response in the MHz range. The instrument obtains sensitivity to high frequency correlated signals far exceeding any previous measurement in a broad frequency band extending beyond the 3.8 MHz inverse light-crossing time of the apparatus. The dominant but uncorrelated shot noise is averaged down over 2×10^{8} independent spectral measurements with 381 Hz frequency resolution to obtain 2.1×10^{-20}m/sqrt[Hz] sensitivity to stationary signals. For signal bandwidths Δf>11 kHz, the sensitivity to strain h or shear power spectral density of classical or exotic origin surpasses a milestone PSD_{δh}
ABSTRACT
Second generation gravitational wave detectors are being installed in a number of locations globally. These long-baseline, Michelson interferometers increase the sensitivity between 10 and 40 Hz by many orders of magnitude compared with first generation instruments. Control of non-linear noise coupling from scattered light fields is critical to achieve low frequency performance. In this paper we investigate the requirements on the attenuation of scattered light using a novel time-domain analysis and two years of seismic data from the LIGO Livingston Observatory.
