A student will build a fully crystalline, cryogenically cooled mirror suspension system inside a Glasgow laboratory to test whether it can handle the extreme demands of future gravitational wave detectors. Current detectors like LIGO use suspended mirrors to cancel out ground vibrations, but the next generation—the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer—will cool those mirrors to cryogenic temperatures. That introduces a problem: the materials must simultaneously be strong, produce almost no thermal noise, and conduct heat efficiently. No existing suspension system meets all three requirements. This project will test crystalline sapphire and silicon at cryogenic temperatures, and develop the bonding and welding techniques needed to assemble them into a working suspension. If the proof-of-concept succeeds, it will retire a major technical risk on the roadmap to these billion-euro observatories. The impact is almost entirely within fundamental science—gravitational wave astronomy will gain detectors sensitive enough to map black hole mergers across the entire universe. There is no immediate everyday application, but the materials and joining techniques developed here could eventually find use in precision manufacturing or quantum sensing, where low thermal noise and high conductivity are similarly critical.
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Future gravitational wave detectors such as the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer will use cryogenically cooled mirror suspensions, as well as the proposed upgrade the LIGO detectors. The materials used need to meet multiple competing requirements to be suitable for use in gravitational wave detectors. The mirror suspension systems used in ground based gravitational wave detectors are essential for isolating the mirrors from ground vibrations, but the materials used need to have high strength and low thermal noise contribution. Low thermal noise contribution is achieved by selection of material and critically by application of suitable jointing techniques. In future cryogenically cooled detectors there is the additional requirement for high thermal conductivity, new material choices and new or adapted jointing techniques to be developed and proven. The role of prototyping such suspensions systems is vital to show the viability of the technology and to have a testbed for experimental verification of the technological and material science applications and difficulties. In this project the student will work to demonstrate a fully crystalline, cryogenically cooled mirror suspension system in the Glasgow cryogenic interferometry facility. This will cover multiple areas of gravitational wave detector instrumentation and material science; including suspension design, installation and characterisation, material bonding and welding, and interferometric sensing and control. The project will investigate material properties of crystalline sapphire and silicon at cryogenic temperatures and develop a proof-of-concept experimental demonstration of this technology which is vital research in the roadmap to future gravitational wave detectors having a significant impact on the field.
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