New mirror substrate and coating film for the third generation gravitational wave telescope

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K20286
• Project/Area Number (Other): 17H06204 (2017-2019)
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Pioneering)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund (2020); Single-year Grants (2017-2019)
• Research Field: Particle-, Nuclear-, Astro-physics, and related fields
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: MIYOKI Shinji 東京大学, 宇宙線研究所, 准教授 (20302680)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-06-30 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 重力波 / シリコン結晶 / 結晶性薄膜 / 赤外線

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research is aimed to completely renew techniques to produce mirror substrate and coating films in order to realize the third-generation generation gravitational wave telescope(GWT) whose sensitivity is targeted to be roughly 10 times higher than the second generation GWTs, that were constructed for the first GW detection and actually realized GW detections, for the more precise GW wave form detection and the drastic enhancement of detected GW event numbers. As a result, the availability of high-quality silicon and sapphire substrates, which are expected to be used as mirror substrates for the third-generation GWTs, was verified. Although the present manufacturing principle, technology, and loss mitigation strategy for the crystalline coating were verified to be reasonable, we need to develop a large size manufacturing machine for the large diameter crystalline coating.

Free Research Field

重力波物理学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

第三世代重力波望遠鏡を実現するために必要な要素技術の内、高品質鏡基材と低熱雑音薄膜コーティング技術の見通しに関する研究が進んだことにより、その第三世代重力波望遠鏡の実現に一歩近つくことができた。これにより、従来の電磁波観測では入手できない、ブラックホールという未踏未開世界からの情報をより高頻度に、より精密に計測することが可能になることで、人類の宇宙に関する知識に革新をもたらすことが期待される。