Active low frequency vertical vibration isolation

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Abstract
We have constructed a system that isolates a key element of our experimental setup from vertical motions of the ground and the surrounding apparatus. This system combines the passive isolation of mechanical springs and an optical table floating on compressed air with an active system that measures the acceleration of the mass to be isolated and feeds back to a solenoid actuator to cancel this motion. Passive isolation alone reduces the acceleration error signal by a factor of 30–1000 from 10 to 100 Hz and by as much as a factor of 1000 above 100 Hz. With the feedback path closed, the system acts like a spring-mass system with a natural resonance frequency of 0.033 Hz. The acceleration error signal is reduced by an additional factor of up to 300 from 0.1 to 20 Hz. This system has enabled us to make precision atom interferometric measurements that would have been impossible without vibration isolation.

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