The Auriga ultracryogenic test facility: A new capacitive resonant transducer.

Sensitivity of presently working gravitational wave resonant detectors is limited by the transduction chain—resonant transducer, impedance matching circuits and SQUIDs. For this reason the Auriga collaboration has started in 1998 the construction of an ultracryogenic test facility where the entire transduction chain can be tested and improved. Mechanical isolation will easely allow for intrinsic thermal noise measurement. In this poster we present the design and first measurements of a new resonant capacitive transducer, intended to widen the detector bandwidth up to 50 Hz with the available new generation of SQUIDs. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]