Kentaro Komori

Mirror actuation design for the interferometer control of the KAGRA gravitational wave telescope

KAGRA is a 3-km cryogenic interferometric gravitational wave telescope located at an underground site in Japan. In order to achieve its target sensitivity, the relative positions of the mirrors of the interferometer must be finely adjusted with attached actuators. We have developed a model to simulate the length control loops of the KAGRA interferometer with realistic suspension responses and various noises for mirror actuation. Using our model, we have designed the actuation parameters to have sufficient force range to acquire lock as well as to control all the length degrees of freedom without introducing excess noise.

Direct measurement of optical-trap-induced decoherence

Thermal decoherence is a major obstacle to the realization of quantum coherence for massive mechanical oscillators. Although optical trapping has been used to reduce the thermal decoherence rate for such oscillators, it also increases the rate by subjecting the oscillator to stochastic forces resulting from the frequency fluctuations of the optical field, thereby setting a fundamental limit on the reduction. This is analogous to the noise penalty in an active feedback system. Here, we directly measure the rethermalization process for an initially cooled and optically trapped suspended mirror, and identify the current limiting decoherence rate as due to the optical trap. Our experimental study of the trap-induced decoherence rate will enable future advances in the probing of fundamental quantum mechanics in the bad-cavity regime, such as testing of deformed commutators.

Ellipticity Dependence of High-Order Harmonics Generated from Aligned CO2 Molecules

Ellipticity dependence of harmonic generation from aligned molecules is found to be sensitive to the molecular alignment. The observed results give us rieh information about the effects of electron trajeetories on high-order harmonic generation.