CaltechAUTHORS
Published May 2014 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

A high precision, compact electromechanical ground rotation sensor

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon University of Sannio
  • 3. ROR icon Oklahoma State University
  • 4. ROR icon Carnegie Mellon University
  • 5. ROR icon Tsinghua University
  • 6. ROR icon Georgia Institute of Technology
  • 7. ROR icon University of Pisa
  • 8. ROR icon Columbia University
  • 9. ROR icon National Institute for Nuclear Physics
  • 10. ROR icon University of Western Australia
  • 11. ROR icon University of Melbourne
  • 12. ROR icon University of California, Los Angeles
  • 13. ROR icon Michigan Technological University
  • 14. ROR icon National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
  • 15. ROR icon University of California, Riverside
  • 16. ROR icon University of Edinburgh
  • 17. ROR icon Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

Abstract

We present a mechanical rotation sensor consisting of a balance pivoting on a tungsten carbide knife edge. These sensors are important for precision seismic isolation systems, as employed in land-based gravitational wave interferometers and for the new field of rotational seismology. The position sensor used is an air-core linear variable differential transformer with a demonstrated noise floor of 1×10^(−11)m/√Hz. We describe the instrument construction and demonstrate low noise operation with a noise floor upper bound of 5.7×10^(−9)rad/√Hz at 10 mHz and 6.4×10^(−10)rad/√Hz at 0.1 Hz. The performance of the knife edge hinge is compatible with a behaviorur free of noise from dislocation self-organized criticality.

Additional Information

© 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. Received 11 December 2013; accepted 25 April 2014; published online 15 May 2014. The instrument mechanics was manufactured by Galli & Morelli, Acquacalda, Lucca, Italy on mechanical design produced by Mr. Gianni Gennaro, San Giuliano Terme Pisa. This work has been done by members of LIGO Laboratory in California Institute of Technology, supported by funding from United States National Science Foundation. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation and operates under cooperative agreement PHY-0757058. We have greatly benefited from comments and advice by Frank Seifert, Eric Gustafson, Virginio Sunnibale, and Randall D. Peters. We would also like to thank Brian Lantz, Fabrice Matichard, and Richard Mittleman. We are very thankful to Takanori Sekiguchi for comments and suggestions for the early draft of this paper. The work of E. Sobacchi was supported by INFN, Italy, in the framework of a student exchange program with NSF. This document has LIGO Laboratory document number LIGO-P1300160-v3.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
45928
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20140528-090001233

Funding

NSF
NSF Cooperative Agreement
PHY-0757058
INFN (Italy)

Dates

Created
2014-05-28
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-10
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Other Numbering System Name
LIGO Laboratory document number
Other Numbering System Identifier
P1300160-v3