• LCGT
• subgroup
• ifo
• ISC
• ICD

Interface Control Document for the ISC sub-system

Preface

This is a draft of the ICD for the LCGT-ISC sub-system.

Sub-System Definition

The role of the Interferometer Sensing and Control (ISC) sub-system is to keep the interferometer at its optimal operation point and extract the gravitational wave signal with low noise. This sub-system can be functionally broken into two parts: Sensing and Control.

Sensing

In order to control the interferometer, we have to know the state of the interferometer. Sensing part of this sub-system defines the methods to extract information about the state of the interferometer. We sort the degrees of freedom (DOFs) of an interferometer into three categories.

Length Sensing

The word "length" here means the distances between the mirrors. In addition to the geometric lengths, a change in the laser frequency also appears as an apparent change in the lengths for an interferometer. Therefore, the laser frequency is counted as a length here. There are 5 length DOFs to be controlled for a Dual-Recycled Fabry-Perot Michelson Interferometer (DRFPMI).

Out of those DOFs, MICH, PRCL and SRCL are called "central part", "short DOFs" or "スモール系". DARM and CARM are called "arm DOFs", "long DOFs" or "ラージ系". CARM is often regarded as being equivalent to the laser frequency variation. DARM contains the gravitational wave signal, so it is the most important DOF.

Alignment Sensing

In order for a laser beam to properly resonate inside the interferometer, the beam and the mirrors of the interferometer must be aligned well. Alignment sensing is a mechanism to monitor errors in the alignment. A mirror has three rotational degrees of freedom, out of which only two (pitch and yaw) are important for an interferometer. For each of pitch and yaw, there are 6 alignment DOFs in an interferometer.

CS, CU, DS, DU are the DOFs of the arms in the Sidles-Sigg basis [ref].

Control