Design and performance characterization of a new LISA-like (laser interferometer space antenna-like) gravitational reference sensor and torsion pendulum testbed.

In this paper, we present the design and performance of the upgraded University of Florida torsion pendulum facility for testing inertial sensor technology related to space-based gravitational wave observatories and geodesy missions. In particular, much work has been conducted on inertial sensor technology related to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) space gravitational wave observatory mission. A significant upgrade to the facility was the incorporation of a newly designed and fabricated LISA-like gravitational reference sensor (GRS) based on the LISA Pathfinder GRS. Its LISA-like geometry has allowed us to make noise measurements that are more representative of those in LISA and has allowed for the characterization of the mechanisms of noise induced on a LISA GRS and their underlying physics. Noise performance results and experiments exploring the effect of temperature gradients across the sensor will also be discussed. The LISA-like sensor also includes unique UV light injection geometries for UV LED based charge management. Pulsed and DC charge management experiments have been conducted using the University of Florida charge management group's technology readiness level 4 charge management device. These experiments have allowed for the testing of charge management system hardware and techniques as well as characterizations of the dynamics of GRS test mass charging. The work presented here demonstrates the upgraded torsion pendulum's ability to act as an effective testbed for GRS technology.

Facts and artifacts in the blinking statistics of semiconductor nanocrystals.

Since its initial discovery just over a decade ago, blinking of semiconductor nanocrystals has typically been described in terms of probability distributions for durations of bright, or "on," states and dark, or "off," states. These distributions are obtained by binning photon counts in order to construct a time series for emission intensity and then applying a threshold to distinguish on states from off states. By examining experimental data from CdSe/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals and by simulating this data according to a simple, two-state blinking model, we find that the apparent truncated power-law distributions of on times can depend significantly on the choices of binning time and threshold. For example, increasing the binning time by a factor of 10 can double the apparent truncation time and change the apparent power-law exponent by 30%, even though the binning time is only 3% of the truncation time. Our findings indicate that stringent experimental conditions are needed to accurately determine blinking-time probability distributions. Similar considerations should apply to any phenomenon characterized by time series data that displays telegraph noise.