Demonstration of a prototype dual-recycled cavity-enhanced Michelson interferometer for gravitational wave detection

The direct detection of gravitational radiation has long been the goal of a large international collaboration of researchers. The first generation of interferometric gravitational wave detectors is currently being constructed around the world. These detectors will most likely be operating at their designed sensitivities within the next few years. The detectors are expected to give insight into the fundamental nature of the universe as well as operate as observatories for previously unobserved astronomical events. Unfortunately, the event rate that these detectors will be sensitive to is on the order of one per year. A 10-fold increase in sensitivity results in a 1000-fold increase in the event rate.; The first generation of the United State's detector, LIGO, is a power-recycled Michelson interferometer with arm cavities. The next upgrade to this detector will come in several forms, one of which is altering the topology. The addition of a signal-recycling mirror to the detection port of the interferometer yields a sensitivity increase of approximately one order of magnitude. The topology alteration also increases the longitudinal degrees of freedom which must be controlled to 5.; This dissertation proposes a control scheme for the signal-recycled cavity-enhanced Michelson interferometer with power recycling using frontal modulation. The control scheme is developed through a series of increasingly complex detector topologies. The control of all five degrees of freedom is discussed in detail. I present a measure of how independent the control signals are from one another.; I also describes the experiment performed to demonstrate the control scheme. The control scheme is simulated in full detail for the tabletop instrument. The results of the simulation and the experiment are compared and show good agreement. A detailed analysis of the operation of the tabletop interferometer is given including the frequency response for two different operating points. The frequency response is shown to be in good agreement with the theory. The results of the experiment are discussed further and some possible future research in this area is proposed.