Charge mitigation techniques using glow and corona discharges for advanced gravitational wave detectors

Charging of silica test masses in gravitational wave detectors could potentially become a significant low-frequency noise source for advanced detectors. Charging noise has already been observed and confirmed in the GEO600 detector and is thought to have been observed in one of the LIGO detectors. In this paper, two charge mitigation techniques using glow and corona discharges were investigated to create repeatable and robust procedures. The glow discharge procedure was used to mitigate charge under vacuum and would be intended to be used in the instance where an optic has become charged while the detector is in operation. The corona discharge procedure was used to discharge samples at atmospheric pressure and would be intended to be used to discharge the detector optics during the cleaning of the optics. Both techniques were shown to reduce both polarities of surface charge on fused silica to a level that would not limit advanced LIGO. Measurements of the transmission of samples that had undergone the charge mitigation procedures showed no significant variation in transmission, at a sensitivity of ~ 200 ppm, in TiO2-doped Ta2O5/SiO2 multi-layer coated fused silica.