JRA3: STREGA - TASK C1 Report on low temperature accelerometers First year report (04/2004, 04/2005) Leading group: Roma

1, INFN (3)

P.Puppo(1), P Rapagnani (1,2) , F. Ricci(1,2) (1)INFN Sezione di Roma, Roma, Italy (2)Dipartimento di Fisica , Universit di Roma La Sapienza, Roma, Italy Abstract We report on the design, construction and test of new sensors for monitoring the oscillations at at low temperature. At this initial stage of the project we focused our attention on systems that can be tuned at room temperature and then characterized at low temperature. In particular we excluded systems based on superconducting properties of the materials and we developed capacitive accelerometers and a position sensor device based on optical readout system. Accelerometers for cryogenic interferometers The use of low temperature to improve the performance of current gravitational wave interferometers will require a deep revision also of the sensors and actuators developed up to now for suspension control. Indeed, if temperatures below 8 K can be reached for the last stage suspension, standard superconducting techniques can be applied to control the mirror motion. If high temperatures will be obtained, it will be necessary to develop a completely new generation of superconducting transducers, using the new hight temperature superconducting materials. We decided to approach this problem step by step, starting from the development of cryogenic compatible models of actuators which can be used also at room temperature. This is typical of capacitive transducers and of optical read-out systems. There are many advantages in focusing the attention on these systems: work in parallel can be done, while the low noise refrigeration systems are being developed, and low vibration noise low temperature systems are not yet available. This is an important feature, allowing to tune up the transducing system at room temperature, before cooling down, with a reduction of the development time. Moreover, the experience gained on the high mass resonant antennas has shown that the noise properties of capacitive actuators and optical sensors at low temperatures, can be competitive with those of typical superconducting systems. Indeed it can be foreseen that in the future a complex array of actuators of different types will be used to control effectively the various suspension stages, operating at different temperatures. Thus, the development of capacitive and non superconducting transducers can be worth pursuing, also in view of the design of next generation interferometers. Here we report on the production and test of 4 different sensors: a) a new accelerometers conceived for monitoring oscillations in the very low frequency range 30 mHz - 2 Hz. The transducer is developed by the Pisa group and it is tested at low temperature in Rome. b) a mono-axial capacitive transducer for high frequency range 10 Hz - 2 kHz c) a tri-axial accelerometer based on piezo-electric sensor covering the range from 0.5 Hz 5

kHz d) a position sensing device conceived mainly for mirror alignment purpose based on a fiber optic bundle.

Performance at low temperature of the low frequency accelerometer. The room temperature version of the accelerometer has been developed by the Pisa group of our collaboration. Its performances and characteristics are extensively described in reference 1. The oscillating mass is suspended both to a vertical and an inverted pendulum. The gravitational potential of the combined pendulum has a maximum. The mass can be kept at this unstable position by a careful balancing procedure and by an active feedback of the differential displacement readout. The frequency can be lowered acting on the restoring forces of the two pendula, and on their balancing. It has been shown (Bertolini Thesis) that frequencies as low as 0.3 Hz can be reached, for pendula having lengths of only some centimeters. Of course, such a complex mechanical behaviour can be greatly changed by the stresses arising from cooling down to low temperatures. For this reason, several tests have been performed on an Aluminum model of the accelerometer, cooled down to 4 K using a PT Refrigerator without any mechanical attenuation of the vibrations of the cold head. The readout was made using two capacitive sensors. An impulsive excitation was given by a coil acting on a small (5 mm diameter, 3 mm thickness, 1 T) magnet glued on the mobile body of the accelerometer. The coil allowed also to keep the accelerometer at the unstable working point, when it was closed in the test chamber inside the cryostat. We have tried to minimize the dc force given by the coil needed to balance the accelerometer, by acting on the planarity of the chamber cooled by the refrigerator, but we have not yet succeeded in measuring the oscillator free decay without any current applied.

Fig. 1 - The Accelerometer in its cooling cradle. However, mechanical accelerometer temperature. nevertheless its delicate balancing, we found that the works perfectly also at low

Fig. 2 - Free decay of the natural vibration mode of the accelerometer (data taken at 6.6 K). In figure 2 we show the typical time decay of fundamental oscillation mode of the accelerometer. The data are colletected at a temperature of 6.6 K. A decay time of about 300 s is obtained at a frequency of 0.5 Hz giving a quality merit factor Q = 300. We notice that a decay time about 5 10 times longer has been measured at room temperature by the Pisa group on the same object. However the Q value, measured at low temperature, is limited by the recoil effect of the vacuum chamber, due to the motion of the oscillating mass in the accelerometer, at 0.5 Hz. In fact, we have not taken any particular precaution during these tests to avoid this effect, which could be enhanced by the presence of an oscillating mode of the test chamber, suspended directly to the cold head of the refrigerator, having a frequency of 2 Hz. Indeed, we observed that this mode easily coupled to the accelerometer oscillating mode. We are building a new configuration of our test PT refrigerator to reduce the recoil problem. In the new cryostat design, thermal shields and test chamber will be rigidly coupled to the ground, while the cooling heads will be mechanically decoupled using soft thermal links.

Mono-axial calibrated cryogenic capacitive transducer. We have developed a capacitive transducer suitable to operate at cryogenic temperatures, to measure the high frequency component of the vibration noise of the cooling heads of our PT refrigerators.

Fig. 5 - The Capacitive Cryogenic Transducer

Fig. 6 - Acceleration noise vs frequency [Hz] measured at low temperature on a cryogenic system equipped with a CryoMech Pulse Tube refrigerator. The vibrating body of the transducer is an Al 6061 plate connected by soft joints to a supporting ring (see Fig. 5) The transducer has its lower resonance mode at ~ 2 kHz. The vibrating plate is faced to a rigid Al6061 plate, insulated by PTFE spacers. The resulting gap is 80 m, with a capacitance of C ~ 800 pF. The device is calibrated at room temperature using a conventional B&K accelerometer, than, once cooled down, a small change in sensitivity occurs, due to a variation of the gap of the order of 1 %, because of thermal contractions. This change can be easily taken into account measuring the value of the capacitance of the transducer at low temperature. The transducer has been used to measure the level of vibration noise of the CryoMech Pulse Tube Refrigerator, in the high frequency range: a low frequency cut-off of ~ 10 Hz was obtained, due to the low input impedance (20 M ) of the coupled electronic preamplifier. A typical spectrum is shown in Fig. 6. The biasing voltage is 450 V, giving a transduction coefficient ~ 4 106 V/m (see reference 2 for a detailed discussion of the sensitivity of this kind of transducer). The noise floor measured in this configuration is ~ 10-4 (m/s2)/Hz. The three-axial piezoelectric accelerometer In order to set a dynamic compensation of the vibration generated by the cryo-cooler mainly in the region of few Hz., we do not need transducers of very high sensitivity, if we are able to monitor the accelerations in the three orthogonal directions and in the coldest point of the cryo-cooler. Moreover, seen the limited space available in the cryogenic system, it is crucial to set up a device of a limited volume and mass. For this purpose we have selected a commercial piezoelectric accelerometer made by ENDEVCO whose sensitivity does not change significantly with the temperature.

Fig. 7 Capacitance and Sensitivity vs. temperature of the selected piezo-electric accelerometer. We assembled three of these accelerometers on the orthogonal face of a small copper cube and we fixed it to the coldest point of the Pulse Tube refrigerator. The total mass of the three-axial system was ~120 g and filling a volume of ~30 cm3. In this configuration we measured the residual vibrations generated by the CryoMech Pulse tube installed in our cryogenic facility. In the figure we show the data collected at 4 K during a cryogenic run. On the left we plot the acceleration noise spectrum of the cold head in the range 0 12 Hz, while on the right we show the high frequency measurement that are dominated by the excitation of the mechanical resonances of the structure attached to the refrigerator that includes light metallic thermal shields. In the low frequency band we notice the peak at 1.2 Hz , which is due to the helium pressure wave propagating in the Pulse Tube. Seen the high level of acceleration we conclude that we need to develop an active compensation system for limiting this excitation.

The position sensor based on a bifurcated bundle of optical fiber. Moreover, we have set up an optical readout to detect the mirror displacement, based on a bundle of optical fiber. Such systems are commonly used at room temperature, but must be modified in order to work also at low temperature.

We have chosen to use a bundle of fibers made of silica by CeramOptec, designed for a wide temperature range (not including cryogenic temperatures). We send on one side the light emitted by a 638 nm laser and we detect at the end of the second fiber path the light reflected by the mirror target using a photodiode (see Fig. 3). We have characterized the sensitivity of the fiber as a function of the distance from a target surface, at room temperature (see Fig. 4), and we will proceed shortly to repeat the same calibration also at low temperature.

Fig. 7 - Scheme of the position sensing device passed on fiber optics bundle This readout system is also useful for measuring the elastic dissipation of the mirror at low temperature. The use of such a readout should allow us to avoid any mechanical dissipation due to the wires connecting the oscillating body of the accelerometer to the electronic preamplifier: together with the use of the new cryostat with reduced recoil effect, it should allow to measure the intrinsic mechanical merit factor of the accelerometer. An increase by a factor ~ 10 in the mechanical merit factor of the same Al 6063 alloy used for the accelerometer has been observed during the development of cryogenic resonant antennas. If such an improvement in Q value can be obtained, a related improvement in sensitivity can be foreseen also for the gravitational wave interferometers.

Fig. 4 Calibration curve of the bundle fiber sensor at room temperature

Conclusions. We have developed and tested few type of accelerometers and a position sensor device to be used at low temperature. At present these device have been conceived for monitoring the oscillation and vibrations of the system in different locations of the cryogenic system. All the device can be used at room temperature as at low temperature. This is not the optimal choice for limiting the transducer dissipation but it permits to simplify the setting up of the complex cryogenic system. In the future we plan to move toward the development of new type of transducers and actuators based on superconducting materials.

References
(1) A. Bertolini, N. Beverini, G. Cella, R. De Salvo, F. Fidecaro, M. Francesconi, D. Simonetti, 2004 Nuclear Instruments and Methods A vol. 158 , pp. 233-235 (2) P. Rapagnani Nuovo Cimento 1982, 5C, pp. 385