GEO600 - the First Gravitational Wave Detector with Dual Recycling

All the large interferometric gravitational wave detectors use power recycling in order to enhance the circulating light power. In GEO600 an advanced optical layout is used including a novel design of suspensions for reducing thermal noise effects and including signal recycling, a resonant enhancement of periodic signals. Several technical problems had to be solved since the installation of the signal-recycling mirror in late 2002, but now stable operation with lock stretches of days has been demonstrated. So GEO600 is the first long-baseline gravitational wave detector in the dual-recycling configuration.

Bibliography

[1] J.R. Smith et al. (The GEO600 Team), Commissioning, characterization and operation of the dual-recycled GEO 600, Class. Quantum Grav. 21 (2004) S1737 – S1745

Further Reading on the Web