Amorphous dielectric optical coatings deposited by plasma ion-assisted electron beam evaporation for gravitational wave detectors

Carlos Garcia Nuñez*, Gavin Wallace, Lewis Fleming, Kieran Craig, Shigeng Song, Sam Ahmadzadeh, Caspar Clark, Simon Tait, Iain Martin, Stuart Reid, Sheila Rowan, Des Gibson

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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Abstract

Coating thermal noise (CTN) in amorphous coatings is a drawback hindering their application in precision experiments such as gravitational wave detectors (GWDs). Mirrors for GWDs are Bragg's reflectors consisting of a bilayer-based stack of high- and low-refractive-index materials showing high reflectivity and low CTN. In this paper, we report the characterization of morphological, structural, optical, and mechanical properties of high-index materials such as scandium sesquioxide and hafnium dioxide and a low-index material such as magnesium fluoride deposited by plasma ion-assisted electron beam evaporation. We also evaluate their properties under different annealing treatments and discuss their potential for GWDs.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)B209-B221
Number of pages13
JournalApplied Optics
Volume62
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 Mar 2023

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