Mechanical loss in state-of-the-art amorphous optical coatings

Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2016 papers

Abstract

We present the results of mechanical characterizations of many different high-quality optical coatings made of ion-beam-sputtered titania-doped tantala and silica, developed originally for interferometric gravitational-wave detectors. Our data show that in multilayer stacks (like high-reflection Bragg mirrors, for example) the measured coating dissipation is systematically higher than the expectation and is correlated with the stress condition in the sample. This has a particular relevance for the noise budget of current advanced gravitational-wave interferometers, and, more generally, for any experiment involving thermal-noise-limited optical cavities.

Related Papers

• → Optimization of long-baseline optical interferometers for gravitational-wave detection(1988)110 cited
• → Detectability of periodic gravitational waves by initial interferometers(2006)17 cited
• → Prophetic detection and discovery of gravitational waves(2023)