Monitoring motion originating from ultra low-temperature cooling systems like cryocoolers is important for vibration sensitive cryogenic experiments like KAGRA. Since no commercial cryogenic accelerometers are available, we developed a compact self-calibrating accelerometer with a Michelson interferometer readout for cryogenic use. Change in calibration factor and drop in interferometer output originating from temperature drop were the main concerns which were tackled. Sensitivity of 3.38×10−11 m/Hz at 1 Hz was achieved at 300 K. The accelerometer was tested inside the KAGRA cryostat; showed stable operation down to 12 K in 0.1-100 Hz band with only 1% visibility drop. Our accelerometer can be employed in low vibration cryogenic environment for a multitude of applications.
@article{arxiv.2203.10427,
title = {A laser interferometer accelerometer for vibration sensitive cryogenic experiments},
author = {Rishabh Bajpai and Takayuki Tomaru and Kazuhiro Yamamoto and Takafumi Ushiba and Nobuhiro Kimura and Toshikazu Suzuki and Tomohiro Yamada and Tohru Honda},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.10427},
year = {2022}
}