Development of superconducting klystron cavity for the Mario Schenberg gravitational wave detector

Abstract

Superconducting reentrant cavities can be used in parametric transducers for gravitational wave antennas. The Mario Schenberg detector, which is being built by the GRAVI-TON group at Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), basically consists of a resonant mass (ball) and a set of parametric transducers in order to monitor the fundamental modes of vibration. When coupled to the antenna, the transducer-sphere system will work as a mass-spring system. In this work the main task is the development of parametric transducers consisting of reentrant superconducting cavity with high performance to be implemented in the Mario Schenberg detector. Many geometries, materials and designs have been tested and compared to optimize parameters such as electric and mechanical Q-factor. The aim is the construction of a complete set of nine parametric transducers that, attached to the spherical antenna, will possibly reach the sensitivity h ∼ 10 −22 Hz −1/2 in the near future.