A fifty-fold improvement of thermal noise limited inertial sensitivity by operating at cryogenic temperatures

Abstract: A vacuum compatible cryogenic accelerometer is presented which will reach $<0.5$ p$g$ Hz$^{-1/2}$ sensitivity from 1 mHz to 10 Hz with a maximum sensitivity of 10 f$g$ Hz$^{-1/2}$ around 10 Hz. This figure can be translated to a displacement sensitivity $<2$ fm Hz$^{-1/2}$ between 2 - 100~Hz. This will supersede the best obtained sensitivity of any motion sensor by more than three orders of magnitude at 1~Hz. The improvement is of interest to the fields of gravitational wave instrumentation, geophysics, accelerator physics and gravitation. In current particle accelerators and proposed future gravitational wave detectors $<$10 K cryogenics are applied to the test masses in order to reduce thermal noise. This concept can benefit from the already present superconducting regime temperatures and reach a $>10^5$ signal-to-noise ratio of all terrestrial seismic spectra. The sensor may be used for control of beam-focusing cryogenic electromagnets in particle accelerators, cryogenic inertial sensing for future gravitational wave detectors and other fields.