Low-vibration cryogenic test facility for next generation of ground-based gravitational-wave observatories.

We present the design and commissioning of a cryogenic low-vibration test facility that measures displacement noise from a gram-scale silicon cantilever at the level of 10-16m/Hz at 1 kHz. This sensitivity is necessary for future tests of thermal noise models on cross sections of silicon suspension samples proposed for future gravitational-wave detectors. A volume of ∼36 l is enclosed by radiation shields cooling an optical test cavity that is suspended from a multi-stage pendulum chain providing isolation from acoustic and environmental noise.

Constraints on Cosmic Strings Using Data from the Third Advanced LIGO-Virgo Observing Run.

We search for gravitational-wave signals produced by cosmic strings in the Advanced LIGO and Virgo full O3 dataset. Search results are presented for gravitational waves produced by cosmic string loop features such as cusps, kinks, and, for the first time, kink-kink collisions. A template-based search for short-duration transient signals does not yield a detection.

Tunable narrow-linewidth laser at 2 μm wavelength for gravitational wave detector research.

We present and characterize a narrow-linewidth external-cavity diode laser at 2 μm, and show that it represents a low-cost, high-performance alternative to fiber lasers for research into 2 μm photonic technologies for next-generation gravitational-wave detectors. A linewidth of 20 kHz for a 10 ms integration time was measured without any active stabilization, with frequency noise of ∼ 15 Hz/Hz between 3 kHz and 100 kHz. This performance is suitable for the generation of quantum squeezed light, and we measure intensity noise comparable to that of master oscillators used in current gravitational wave interferometers.