Parametric instabilities have long been studied as a potentially limiting effect in high-power interferometric gravitational wave detectors. Until now, however, these instabilities have never been observed in a kilometer-scale interferometer. In this Letter, we describe the first observation of parametric instability in a gravitational wave detector, and the means by which it has been removed as a barrier to progress.
We develop an analytical approach in order to understand the causes of sidebands imbalance. The results have been tested by two different and more sophisticated numerical tools. The main static perturbations that can generate sidebands imbalance are described and fully analyzed, with a special attention to the design of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory I, whose typical parameters have been used for numerical estimations of this phenomenon.
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