Compact inertial sensors for measuring external disturbances of physics experiments

Compact, high-precision inertial sensors are needed in the control schemes of many modern physics experiments to isolate them from disturbances caused by seismic motion. We present an inertial sensor whose mechanical oscillator fits on a one-inch diameter optic. The oscillators achieve a mechanical Quality factor of a fundamental oscillation mode of 600,000 and a resonance frequency of 50 Hz, giving them a suspension thermal noise floor lower than all commercially available inertial sensors. The motion of this fundamental mode is suitable to encode inertial motion into the sensor readout. The oscillator is combined with an optical resonator readout scheme that achieves a displacement noise of 100 fm/ $$ above 0.2 Hz. We validate the sensors' noise floor using a huddle test. Below 20 Hz, the sensor offers comparable performance to the best inertial sensors available today while being a fraction of the size. Above 20 Hz, the sensor is, to the author's knowledge, the best demonstrated in the literature to date for such a sensor, with a self-noise floor of 0.1 ng/ $$ . The excellent performance of the sensors across seismically relevant frequencies, vacuum compatibility, and compact size make it a prime candidate for integration into sophisticated seismic isolation schemes, such as those used by gravitational wave detectors.