Scientists from Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are using powerful X-rays to study high-performance mirror coatings that could help make the LIGO gravitational wave observatory 10 times more sensitive to cosmic events that ripple space-time.
Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
![Stanford’s Riccardo Bassiri with a mirror coating sample used for an X-ray experiment at SSRL.](images/2016-0208-2394-SSRL-LIGO-cropped.jpg)
The current version of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, called Advanced LIGO, was the first experiment to directly observe gravitational waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago. In September 2015, it detected a signal coming from two black holes, each about 30 times heavier than the sun, which merged into a single black hole 1.3 billion years ago. The experiment picked up a similar second event in December 2015.
Extremely precise mirrors are the heart of LIGO…
“The detection of gravitational waves will fundamentally change our understanding of the universe in years to come,” says Riccardo Bassiri, a physical science research associate at Stanford’s interdisciplinary Ginzton Laboratory. ”Extremely precise mirrors are the heart of LIGO, and their coatings determine the experiment’s sensitivity, or ability to measure gravitational waves. So improving those coatings will make future generations of the experiment even more powerful.”
Bassiri has teamed up with Apurva Mehta, a staff scientist at SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), to study the atomic structure of coating materials and develop ideas for better ones. SSRL is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
Since LIGO consists of two nearly identical instruments, located 1,900 miles apart in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, it can also roughly determine a gravitational wave’s cosmic origin.
“The effects of gravitational waves on the LIGO detectors are incredibly small, with relative changes in arm length on the order of one thousandth of the diameter of an atomic nucleus,” Bassiri says. “On this scale, random atomic motions in the mirror coatings, known as thermal noise, can obscure signals from gravitational waves.”
Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
![An experimental setup at SSRL used to study mirror coating materials with the grazing-incidence X-ray pair distribution function (GI-XPDF) technique.](images/2016-0208-2313-SSRL-LIGO.jpg)
Understanding Thermal Noise
All materials exhibit thermal noise to some degree, but some are less noisy than others. LIGO’s mirrors, which are among the least noisy in the world, are coated with thin layers of silica and tantala, oxides of the chemical elements silicon and tantalum.
Previous research has shown that heating tantala to hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit and adding titanium oxide, or titania, to its layers in a process called doping can lower the thermal noise. However, scientists do not know exactly why.
“At the moment, we’re only beginning to understand how these treatments affect the atomic structure,” Mehta says. “If we were able to get a better grasp of how a material’s properties are linked to its structure, we might be able to design better materials in a more efficient, controlled way instead of searching for them with a trial-and-error approach.”
Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
In this video, Stanford’s Riccardo Bassiri explains his work at SSRL, which aims to better understand thermal noise in mirror coatings.
Applications Beyond LIGO
The researchers are in the process of testing a number of materials to see how various doping percentages and manufacturing procedures change the medium-range order. Their hope is that this will lead to detailed models of the atomic structures and to theories that can predict how tweaking these structures can yield better material properties.
“Advanced LIGO and the desire to understand the fundamental physics of gravitational waves are the main drivers for this type of research,” Bassiri says. “But it also has the potential for influencing a whole industry that uses amorphous coating materials for a wide range of applications, from precise atomic clocks to high-performance electronics and computing to corrosion-resistant coatings.”
The research team includes Stanford Professors Robert Byer and Martin Fejer as well as SLAC scientists Badri Shyam, Kevin Stone and Michael Toney. Other institutions involved in this research are the California Institute of Technology; the University of Glasgow, UK; the University of Oxford, UK; and members of the LIGO scientific collaboration. Funding sources include the National Science Foundation and the Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK.
Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
![SLAC’s Apurva Mehta (left) and Stanford’s Riccardo Bassiri discuss their X-ray experiments at SSRL.](images/2016-0208-2377-SSRL-LIGO.jpg)
For questions or comments, contact the SLAC Office of Communications at communications@slac.stanford.edu.
SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, Calif., SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.