Investigation of ultra-high sensitivity klystron cavity transducers for broadband resonant-mass gravitational wave detectors

Since the Stanford pioneering work of Paik in the 1970s, cryogenic resonant-mass gravitational wave detectors have used resonant transducers, which have the effect of increasing both the detector sensitivity and bandwidth. Now nanotechnology is opening new possibilities towards the construction of ultra-high sensitivity klystron cavity transducers. It might be feasible to construct TeraHz/micron parametric transducers in a near future. They would be so sensitive that there would be no need for multimode resonant transducers. The resonant-antenna would act as a broadband detector for gravitational waves. A spherical antenna, such as Schenberg or Mini-Grail, could add to this quality the advantage of wave position and polarity determination. Here we propose an extreme geometry for a re-entrant klystron cavity (df/dg ∼ 1018 Hz/m, where f stands for the microwave pump frequency and g for variations in the cavity gap), obtaining a frequency response for the strain sensitivity of the Schenberg gravitational wave detector such that its bandwidth increases from 50 Hz (using the so-called resonant mode coupling) to ∼4000 Hz when operating @ 20 mK, and, when compared to LIGO experimental curve, shows a competitive band of about 2000 Hz. We also study some of the technological complications that can be foreseen to design such a resonant cavity. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd.