Obtaining the sensitivity of a calibrator for interferometric gravitational wave

Abstract

Abstract Interferometric gravitational wave detectors (IGWD) are a very complex detector, the need to lock the detector in a dark fringe condition besides the vibrations that affect the mirrors, creates the necessity of using active suspension systems. These active systems make the system reach the desired sensitivity but make the calibration of such detectors much more difficult. To solve this problem a calibrator is proposed, a resonant mass gravitational wave detector could be used to detect the same signal in a narrower band and use the measured amplitude to calibrate the IGWD, as resonant mass gravitational wave detectors are easily calibrated. This work aims to obtain the expected sensitivity of such a calibrator by using lumped modelling in such mechanical detectors. The calibrator is modelled as a spring mass system and the sensitivity curve is presented calculated in by a matlab program. The curve shows that using state of art parameters for the detector the final sensitivity is close to the quantum limit and can be used to calibrate the IGWDs.